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North Olympic Peninsula Skills Center Natural Resources
To provide a program that provides hands-on, relevant natural resources research experience while meeting the needs of and building capacity within individual students and the North Olympic Peninsula region.
openchannels.org
OpenChannels is designed to become a comprehensive source for news, guidance, and community discussion on sustainable practices in ocean planning and management.
River of Kings – Video
Part 1 of 2 part series by Carl Safina on the Nisqually River Restoration.
Salish Magazine
Salish Magazine is a free online magazine that takes inquisitive readers outdoors with visually rich storytelling about features people can see firsthand in our public forests and beaches.
Victoria Sewage Project
The official city site on the project. The latest scoop on the Canadian poop!
WA State Family Forest Fish Passage Program
The Family Forest Fish Passage Program provides funding to small forest landowners to repair or remove fish passage barriers. Download the film.
News Sites
Green Acre Radio on KBCS
Green Acre Radio on KBCS — Sustainability, local food production, restoration & environmental talk radio.
NW Indian Fisheries Commission
The Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission (NWIFC) is a support service organization for 20 treaty Indian tribes in western Washington.
Brinnon Group
Local group opposing Black Point resort
Clam Gardens
Network of researchers exploring First Nation gardening of clams in history, and it’s relationship to today.
Coastal Watershed Institute
“To promote long term, ecological, community based stewardship of marine and terrestrial ecosystems thru scientific research and local partnerships.”
League of Women Voters – Clallam County
a nonpartisan political organization, encourages the informed and active participation of citizens in government, and influences public policy through education and advocacy.
League of Women Voters – Jefferson County
The League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan political organization, encourages the informed and active participation of citizens in government, and influences public policy through education and advocacy.
Local Food Access Network
North Peninsula local food org with an emphasis on developing and supporting increased and sustainable capacity for production, distribution, and consumption locally.
North Olympic Salmon Coalition
The mission of the North Olympic Salmon Coalition is to restore, enhance, and protect habitat of North Olympic Peninsula wild salmon stocks and to promote community volunteerism, understanding, cooperation and stewardship of these resources.
Northwest Watershed Institute
NWI’s mission is to provide scientific and technical support to protect and restore fish and wildlife habitats and watershed ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest.
Olympic Environmental Council
The Olympic Environmental Council works on issues related to the environment and health that affect our North Olympic Peninsula communities.
Olympic Park Associates
If you share with us a passion for Olympic National Park, a concern for the Park’s future, and a vision that Olympic National Park should always be a wild and natural place, we invite you to join Olympic Park Associates.
Washington Environmental Council
WEC has been working for a couple of decades on environmental activism. A great group of people actually getting things done.
Whale Trail
Signs along the way to take you to great whale viewing locations
Wild Fish Conservancy
Wild Fish Conservancy seeks to improve conditions for all of the Northwest’s wild fish
This is a huge change to the proposal, hopefully for the good. However, in reading this article I find that it may cause more problems than it solves. While I applaud the idea, the implementation seems problematic. I urge those of you interested in seeing this implemented or those seeing issues with the implementation to attend this meeting. Now is the time to tweak the process so that it helps people do the right thing.
NOAA Fisheries will hold online public workshops on Jan. 26 and Jan. 28 to explain the conservation calculator that the agency developed to assess the value of nearshore habitat. Both workshops will run from 9 to 11 a.m. Details will be posted on the webpage Puget Sound Nearshore Habitat Conservation Calculator.
Some good environmental news! Tom Banse writes about the successful efforts to get money inserted into the newly passed budget to help continue the reintroduction of sea otters to the west coast. Info on Washington counts of sea otters also in this story.
“I’m very pleased. This is very timely,” Bailey said in an interview. “It will definitely help U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service develop a strategic approach for how best to conserve and protect sea otters on the Pacific Coast.”
More fallout of the destructive force of Hurricane Trump. In this instance, scientists managed to hold off his flunkies from essentially gutting the report. As he leaves we can only look forward to rebuilding this nation’s science credibility world wide. Why is this important? Because the output of this report guides decision making for years to come.
As the Trump Administration burns all it’s bridges behind them in a scorched earth environmental policy, the latest outrage is the long anticipated culling of real science behind future decisions to protect our food, water or air. Or perhaps you would rather ignore the findings of scientists that don’t agree with your company’s toxic product. Wonder how they will do it? Read the article referenced below. The Biden administration will have it’s work cut out for it reversing these disastrous acts.
The Environmental Protection Agency has finalized a rule to limit what research it can use to craft public health protections, a move opponents argue is aimed at crippling the agency’s ability to more aggressively regulate the nation’s air and water. The “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science” rule, which the administration began pursuing early in President Trump’s term, would require researchers to disclose the raw data involved in their public health studies before the agency could rely upon their conclusions. It will apply this new set of standards to “dose-response studies,” which evaluate how much a person’s exposure to a substance increases the risk of harm. Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis report. (Washington Post)
This is an important article to help one understand the forces at play over this issue. The Army Corp of Engineers current proposal, described in this article, would lead to more destruction of the remaining virgin bays it wants for commercial activities and likely lead to ever more lawsuits. The Corps and the industry are in this mess because a group challenged the Corps and unearthed the fraud behind the science they have been putting out for decades. Now we hold our breath and see if we get a push into the next administration for update to the process, but will they send it back for changes or approve it to get the industry back working?
But as they leave, the wrecking crew of the Trump administration is doing it’s best to destroy any and all environmental protections.
Legal protections for marine shorelines, streams and wetlands could be revised just before President Trump leaves office, as the Army Corps of Engineers updates 52 “nationwide permits” that allow for a variety of water-related projects. …”Another growing concern is the effect of shellfish operations on spawning habitat for so-called forage fish, considered critical to salmon and other important species”, said Laura Hendricks, executive director of the Coalition to Protect Puget Sound Habitat. Two key species, surf smelt and sand lance, spawn in the intertidal area where shellfish grow and where activities can affect their populations, she said.
Good news being reported by NPR. This blog will check into the details and come back with a more comprehensive overview later.
“The massive spending package just passed by Congress includes the most significant climate legislation in more than a decade, along with significant changes in energy policy. It was easy to miss, nestled among pandemic relief payments, the annual spending bill, new Smithsonian museums and protection from surprise medical billing. But pull out the energy provisions alone, and the bill is remarkable: It includes $35 billion in funding for basic research, extensions of tax credits for renewable energy companies, and a long-delayed mandate to reduce the use of a particularly damaging greenhouse gas. The fact that Congress managed to pass climate legislation at all is noteworthy in and of itself. For years, thanks to gridlock and an administration actively hostile to climate action, legislators have struggled to set new climate policy, even on measures that enjoy widespread bipartisan support. Camila Domonoske & Jeff Brady report. (NPR)”
The Nestucca disaster changed the way that Washington State and BC handles oil spill prevention. Can it protect us from another failure? It’s sometimes hard to know. With more Bakken Crude planning to be shipped by the hundreds of tankers through our Strait, it’s at least good to know that we have some minimal standards that have carried us through to today. Also worth remembering is that the Dalco Passage spill near Tacoma that was as bad as it was because the Coast Guard couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed in the middle of the night when oil was observed. This is article is a good reminder that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
“In 1988, an oil spill from the barge Nestucca resulted in one of the largest, most damaging environmental incidents in the history of Washington. But the knowledge gained from the spill also led to dramatic change in oil spill regulations, prevention methods, and response tactics that have maximized environmental protection. (WA Dept of Ecology)”
State officials have approved new rules that limit whale watch boats to a three-month season for viewing Puget Sound’s endangered killer whales. They will only be allowed from July through September. The boats may only be near the endangered orcas twice a day — two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. And only three boats at a time near a group of the southern residents. Bellamy Pailthorp reports. (KNKX)
It’s about time, the Trump administration has been stalling long enough.
The Center for Biological Diversity filed a notice of intent to sue the federal government today [12/16] for its failure to finalize expanded habitat protections for critically endangered Southern Resident killer whales, whose population has dipped to just 74 orcas. The National Marine Fisheries Service proposed designating 15,627 square miles of new critical habitat in September 2019. The rule would expand current protections in Washington’s Salish Sea south along the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California to Point Sur. The proposed rule followed an April 2019 court-ordered agreement after the Center sued the Trump administration in 2018 for failing to issue habitat protections required by the Endangered Species Act. The Act requires agencies to finalize proposed rules within one year. Today’s notice letter gives the Fisheries Service 60 days to comply. (Center for Biological Diversity News Release)
Gov. Jay Inslee Tuesday unveiled a new climate-change package that includes a renewed push for a clean fuels standard and capping some greenhouse-gas emissions. Other proposals would further electrify Washington’s ferry fleet and reduce the carbon footprint of buildings, according to Inslee, and bring equity into environmental policy.Inslee’s plan comes as part of his new two-year budget proposal, and as lawmakers prepare to convene in January for the 2021 legislative session. Joseph O’Sullivan reports. (Seattle Times)
Trying to finalize the protection of the Toandos Peninsula. This is currently the largest conservation project in East Jefferson County.
Conservation groups, Tribes, community members and shellfish farmers are banding together to press the state to expand the Dabob Bay Natural Area.
If approved, the expansion of the protected lands on the Toandos Peninsula would be the preserve’s third since 2009.
In a letter addressed to Washington Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz, the consortium — spearheaded by the Northwest Watershed Institute — called for an expansion of the southern boundary of the Dabob Bay Natural Area to include a series of recently-discovered rare forests.
This is a never ending issue. Our Jefferson County Port Commissioners never seem to take this as a serious threat undermining our local parks. Once granted, it is unlikely ever to be “undone.” I’m glad to see the State Parks Commission taking it seriously.
“The public is very reluctant for you to have access to our parks,” Danenberg said. “There’s a creepiness factor that even if you’re never seen, we know it’s happening and it’s making the public uncomfortable.”
As we reach the end of the most determined anti-environmental politician seen since the 1890s, his fury, like the remains of a Louisiana coastal town after the passing of hurricane, is only seen in retrospective. During the storm of his insane reign, doing the bidding of only his own warped mind, and cheered on by racists, industrialists and fools the likes of which we have not seen since the millions who fawned over Adolph Hitler before he brought them all to ruin, Trump attempted, on his own but with the help of toadies and tools of the oil and gas industry, to undo regulations that were instituted by a Republican President with bi-partisan support in the 1970s and many since. Tagging along were a who’s who of other businesses, including some right in our backyard that went to Washington and spent tens of thousands lobbying to try and court favor to eliminate local control of regulations that help to stop or slow their conversion of public beaches to monoculture aqua-industry. Given this flood of money and influence for the shareholders, all we could do was hunker down, hope it wouldn’t wash us all out to sea, comforting each other with music, food and hope as we sat around the night fire.
Now, the students and environmentalists around the country (and world) are coming out from hiding and tallying the President’s path through our most vulnerable people and places. It’s not pretty. But all was not lost. As we know, he lost an election that would have looked right at home in the most corrupt right wing banana republic, complete with lunatic fringe conspiracy theories and inept lawyers making claims for which their law school teachers would have not only flunked them, but thrown them out of school for advocating a coup d’etat in our ever fragile democracy. Their thinly veiled racist arguments (in only targeting votes from mainly African American dominated cities) was angrily thrown out by judges, some put in power by Trump. His path of legislative destruction of our environmental laws was only slowed by a small cadre of environmental lawyers and organizations who fought tooth and nail with support from their donors. Some they won, some they lost and some are still in litigation.
First and foremost, there is the ongoing tally of his rollback of hard fought environmental regulations in this country. To be clear, these regulations helped Republicans and Democrats alike to have cleaner water, more ducks to hunt and more control over the destruction that industry was doing to our land, air and waters. They allowed any citizen to attempt to slow the process that greed and the never ending quarterly profits demanded from our ever shrinking places that we try and protect from the corporate unending need to consume on behalf of shareholders, or really, just the skewed salaries of upper management. That Republicans laughed and clapped for photo ops as they watched them be removed is testament to their insanity. Who was he representing? It was perfectly clear.
The Harvard’s School of Environmental Law, has had an Environmental and Energy Law program that has been tracking the regulatory rollback of the mad man in the White House. They have a web site where you can go and see for yourself how bad it’s been.
But we did stop him in places. Lawsuits are still working their ways through the courts, and it will take support from a new Justice Department to continue to fight them. Don’t count on it. Projects like Pebble Mine are likely dead for now.
Stooges that Trump put in place in all levels of government will need to be washed out, which is not easy. But seeing them will be. They will be the ones doing their best to do nothing in their roles.
Science will return, as it always does after a bout of religious and political insanity. Even 1200 years of the Catholic Church running and ruining Europe couldn’t stop science from coming back and shining the light going forward.
Canada recovered a great deal from the destructive environmental fury of the bumbling and inept Steven Harper. And when your Canadian friends and family try and lord it over you at the next gathering, remind them that Trump only lasted one 4 year term. Ask them if they remember how long Harper and his goon-squad ran their science. (It was nine long years). Ask them what they were doing while scientists in Harper’s government threw a hundred years of science into trash bins at major government research centers (or carried them home to hide until he was gone) because of deep cuts that essentially ended historical record management. Yes, that really happened.
So it’s time to roll up the sleeves and dive back into the work. This blog will attempt to chronicle the next wave of changes for us here on the Peninsula, so far from the centers of power. The good news, if there is some, is that we have solid Democrat representatives, proven to work for positive changes in our county, state and White House. President Biden and his crew has the opportunity to rewrite rules better than before. But he only has three years before the next election unfolds, when the next wave of fanatical right wing morally bankrupt politicians come oozing out of Fox News and Parlor to attempt to overthrow what’s left of our democracy. He’ll have lots of people in Washington and elsewhere trying to stop him. His honeymoon will last one night and that will be it. Good news? He’s spent a lifetime working that system. Sometimes experience and old age counts. In fact, it always does. There’s a reason native peoples honor their elders. They carry hard earned knowledge. Right now, local knowledge of the swamps of Washington D.C. counts a lot.
Rome wasn’t built in a day it’s been said, but Greece’s democracy, that ours was modeled after, fell after a pandemic and a war. The master of history, the first war correspondent and the best, Thucydides, witnessed its fall. He wrote words 2400 years ago that could have been written yesterday.
“To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change their usual meanings. What used to be described as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member. …any idea of moderation was just a an attempt to disguise one’s unmanly character…fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man, and to plot against an enemy behind his back was perfectly legitimate self defense…If an opponent made a reasonable speech, the party in power, far from giving it a generous reception, took every precaution to see it had no practical effect.”
Alright. Take some time to celebrate the election, get through December hunkered down and healthy, wear the damn mask, and then in January, it’s time to clean up after the hurricane. There’s work to do.
Al Bergstein – Editor and Publisher
Translation of Thucydides from the Penguin Classics “History of the Peloponnesian War” Translated by Rex Warner.
Donna Sandstrom and Tim Ragen give their take on a proposal to possibly protect Orca from excessive noise and harassment. This is a highly contested idea by the whale watching industry and this represents one sides point of view. Read it, do some research and make up your own mind. You can have a say online at the Zoom link noted below.
The British Columbia pilot program in this was a success. Glad to see that we are going to try this soon. A common sense approach to fixing part of the problems plaguing the Orca population.
Underwater noise from ship traffic is one of the major threats to Puget Sound’s endangered Southern Resident orcas. It can interfere with the whales’ ability to communicate, navigate by echolocation and find the increasingly scarce salmon they prefer. A recommendation from the orca recovery task force convened by Gov. Jay Inslee in 2018-19 is to reduce noise and disturbance from large vessels. Work is underway to develop a program called “Quiet Sound,” which will alert ships to the presence of whales so they can re-route or slow down. Bellamy Pailthorp reports. (KNKX)
Now the battle against fish farming in Puget Sound moves to the State Supreme Court.
Environmental groups are taking their fight against Cooke Aquaculture’s proposal to transition from farming Atlantic salmon to steelhead to the state Supreme Court. The groups appealed Monday a Nov. 6 decision by King County Superior Court Judge Johanna Bender that upheld a permit issued by the state Department of Fish & Wildlife to allow such farms in area waters. Kimberly Cauvel reports. (Skagit Valley Herald)
If you are interested in these issues, here’s another source of news. They have done a nice job on this website. Hard to believe it’s taken the Puget Sound Partnership this long to do something like this! But better late than never!
“Making Waves,” https://makingwaves.psp.wa.gov/ a new online magazine from the Puget Sound Partnership, promises to bring us the stories behind the many efforts to protect and restore the Puget Sound ecosystem. Chris Dunagan reports. (Puget Sound Institute)
A deep dive into data from the Department of Natural Resources reveals some scary trends and surprising findings.
Crosscut took a deep dive into these 13,452 fire records to highlight some numbers that help put this year into context and tell the broader story of our state’s fires.
The focal point for environmental news, links to organizations involved in protecting our resources, and other topics to help educate and connect the public on the Peninsula.
HOTLINES FOR REPORTING SPILLS
WA State Emergency Management Division: 1-800-258-5990
National Response Center: 1-800-424-8802
Pacific States & British Columbia: 1-800-OILS-911 (1-800-645-7911)
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