Earth Share of Washington

Community Stewardship Along the Shores of the Duwamish

- By R.S. Mancuso, Earth Share of Washington Guest Author

R.S. Mancuso is participating in Earth Share of Washington’s Journalism Internship Program for Earth Share of Washington this winter. In addition to writing for Earth Share, she is a student at Prescott College in Arizona, working her way towards a degree in Marine Environmental Studies and Creative Writing.

I recently had the opportunity to visit a restoration site on the Duwamish River, organized by People for Puget Sound. Herring House Park in South Seattle is a lovely little park, formerly the site of Seaboard Lumber, one of the first and largest mills in Seattle from 1929 to the 1980's. When restoration commenced in 2000 the land was a barren dirt lot. With the help of the People for Puget Sound’s Sound Stewards, this park has been transformed into a lush haven for returning wildlife.

Eliza Ghitis, the Habitat Restoration Coordinator for People for Puget Sound, is proud of the fact that community members conduct the maintenance of each of the restoration sites. The volunteer Sound Stewards are responsible for maintenance, monitoring, and data collection from their adopted site. Eliza says, "One of the things that is helpful about the Sound Stewardship program, is it helps connect people to Puget Sound."

Sound Stewards, a program run by The People for Puget Sound, consists of ordinary - yet extraordinary – people who make this restoration possible by volunteering their time. When they sink their hands into dirt to plant grasses and trees, these volunteers are literally changing their world. Sound Stewards are trained by People for Puget Sound to care for shorelines and, in the process, they develop communities to help maintain and beautify the adopted shoreline.

Here at Herring House Park, little paths wind through grassy patches. Trees and assorted plants line the walkways. There are benches to sit on and watch the river drift by. The park is peaceful despite being situated in an industrial area. While I was visiting, quite a few people strolled through the park while others walked their dogs. This park held the feeling of community.

On the bank of the Duwamish River you can see a fenced area with strings running back and forth, cordoning off different sections where replanting of native grasses takes place. If you follow the path through Herring House Park, you walk through other restored sites, Terminal 107 and Puget Creek.

Eliza pointed out that Puget Creek was once a dumping ground for cement kiln dust. In 1999, it was prepared for restoration by excavating 5,000 cubic yards of contaminated soils.

As a visitor in 2007, I see no evidence of its polluted past. What I see is a place where squirrels and crows have a home. I was able to walk down to a section of beach, watch the birds, and listen to the water lap at the shore. While this shoreline will never be completely wild again, it has been reclaimed by nature with a little help from caring individuals.

With the largest percentage of shoreline property being privately owned, there is a great opportunity for individuals to contribute to improving the health of Puget Sound. Eliza hopes to help people understand how this benefits the community. "We are trying to draw attention to the fact it can raise property values," says Eliza. "There is wildlife returning to these areas - osprey and beavers have moved into the area. I was just at Puget Creek on Saturday and a bald eagle flew by."

Everyone at some point has picked up a newspaper, or magazine, and felt despair when reading about the environment. Puget Sound is in poor heath: orcas are endangered; invasive species have seized hold in waterways; stormwater pollutes the water, poisoning marine creatures.

Can you make a difference?

The answer I found: yes, one person can make a difference. The change one person can effect on his/her surrounding may be small, but with enough people doing something, the total outcome can be vast. Little things can help such as, such as safely disposing of prescription medication (not in toilets or down drains), washing the car at a facility that reuses water, avoiding chemical pesticides. Organizations like People for Puget Sound give everyone a way to get involved with the greater issues concerning our local communities, Puget Sound, and parks.

Washington Wilderness Coalition Celebrates 20 Years as an Earth Share Organization

- By Nalani Askov, Executive Director of Washington Wilderness Coalition

To celebrate Earth Share of Washington's 20th Anniversary (1987-2007), we plan to showcase the work of our organizations over the past two decades. Each month, we'll feature a different Earth Share organization, their contributions to making our communities more vibrant & livable, and their efforts to create a cleaner Washington and a healthy planet. In 1987, Washington Wilderness Coalition joined a growing coalition of environmental organizations, known at the time as the Environmental Fund of Washington and later to become Earth Share. WWC was one of the founding 10 organizations in this young and growing coalition.

Washington Wilderness Coalition (WWC) was founded in 1979 to preserve wilderness and biodiversity for future generations. We work to protect wildlands, waters and wildlife though outreach, public educations, organizing and support of grassroots conservation groups.

In its early years, WWC enjoyed many successes, including:

• Playing a key role in passage of the 1984 Washington Wilderness Act protecting over 1 million acres of Wilderness;
• Lobbying successfully for the creation of the Mt. St. Helens National Volcanic Monument and the Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area;
• Coordinating citizen response that defeated plans to drill for oil in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area;
• Stopping dam construction on Railroad Creek and the Duckabush River;
• Helping to stop timber sales in areas proposed for wilderness including south of Glacier Peak and in the Kettle Range in E. Washington;

In February 1987, WWC Executive Director Karen Fant was one of the 11 founding board members of the "Environmental Fund of Washington," which later became Earth Share of Washington. In the past 20 years, the successes of WWC and Earth Share have continued to grow, even as challenges to protecting our environment have become more complex.

Working on wildland conservation issues requires a great deal of patience. Often, sustained effort over many years is required before success is realized. Few achievements happen quickly. Nearly a decade of work by environmental and conservation organizations, including WWC, was needed before President Reagan signed a bill in 1988 establishing the 1,800-acre National Wildlife Refuge in Grays Harbor, WA to protect wetlands of critical importance to migratory shorebirds and other fish, wildlife and plant species.

Sometimes initial successes must be revisited - again. In 1992, Washington Wilderness Coalition, along with the Washington Trails Association, North Cascades Conservation Council and other groups, intervened in a law suit by the Northwest Motorcycle Association challenging a Forest Service’s ban on off-road vehicle use in the North Fork Entiat section of the Wenatchee National Forest. We won and in 1994 the Ninth Circuit also upheld the ban. The case was the first in the country to give judicial guidance on user conflicts with off-road vehicles on federal public lands. In 2005, WWC and these groups, along with the Cascade Chapter of the Sierra Club, sued the Forest Service to stop it from creating a "world class" motorcycle trail in a nearby area of the Wenatchee National Forest - an area previously proposed for wilderness designation. The Forest Service wanted to embed thousands of concrete blocks in the trail and install a large steel bridge to create a loop trail. The Federal Court found the Forest Service did not adequately consider the cumulative impact of incremental expansions of the off-road vehicle trail system before approving the project and issued an injunction prohibiting it from going forward.

Success comes in many forms. It may be a successful lawsuit, the adoption of new legislation or policy - or preventing the adoption of bad legislation or policy. Success is also found in educating others and building collaborative efforts that can sustain our conservation goals over time. In 1999, WWC co-founded the Fair Trails Coalition. Like many conservation victories, we were successful only after many years of effort in stopping the State of Washington from spending a disproportionate amount of state gas tax funds to build backcountry motorcycle trails. This victory resulted in a fairer distribution of gas tax funds to support the development and maintenance of hiking trails. The Fair Trails Coalition continues to monitor this important issue.

Public education about wilderness preservation has been an essential part of WWC's mission since its founding. Over the past 20 years, the Washington Wilderness Coalition has literally had personal contact with and helped to educate over 100,000 people in King County and throughout Washington state about a wide range of wild land conservation issues. That number doesn't include the many thousands of others who have been reached indirectly. In 1998, WWC worked with members of the popular rock bands REM and Pearl Jam to speak out against the destruction of our national forests. The musicians held benefit concerts for WWC, produced PSAs which ran on CNN and VH1 and served as spokespersons for State and national media outlets on forest issues.

WWC's work has always emphasized building connections with people. That focus is strongly evident in our work over the past 6 years on the Wild Sky Wilderness. WWC's local outreach efforts to diverse groups including hunters and anglers, small businesses, local elected officials, and religious communities was recently called a model of the nation by those working to protect wilderness on a national level. Our work with Republican Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn is a good example. Many said it was a waste of time to even try to get her support for a proposal to protect the Wild Sky area but WWC did more than try, we succeeded. Through good old-fashioned grassroots efforts, WWC convinced Rep. Dunn of the merits of the Wild Sky Wilderness Bill and her co-sponsorship underscored the bipartisan support for the legislation.

This is necessarily only a brief sample of WWC's achievements over the past 20 years. We are very proud to count Earth Share as one of those achievements. With the help of many others, the original dream for Earth Share has been richly achieved. Earth Share of Washington, its organizations and the thousands of individuals who give to help protect our environment can look forward to another 20 years of successful work.

An End to a Mother Bear's Suffering, and Hope for Her Cub

- By Kevin Mack, PAWS Wildlife Rehabilitation Center Naturalist

In mid-January, the PAWS Wildlife Center received a call from a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife agent with a request for help. He was monitoring a mother Black Bear with a yearling cub that had been seen on the outskirts of Enumclaw. He feared that something had disturbed the bears from their winter sleep and that, since food resources in winter are scarce, they were likely to come into conflict with humans. He also noted that the mother bear was visibly underweight, and he was concerned that she was injured or ill. He planned to continue to monitor the situation while also looking into options for care and housing of the bears if it became necessary to capture them. PAWS agreed to provide assistance.

On January 30, the wildlife agent captured the bears, and the next morning he drove them to PAWS. Both bears were tranquilized and were examined by PAWS wildlife veterinarians Dr. John Huckabee and Dr. Darlene Deghetto. The cub, a female, had a large laceration on her ear. She was also thin, but in otherwise good health. Dr. Huckabee cleaned and sutured the cub’s wound while Dr. Deghetto and other PAWS staff members assessed the condition of her mother.

During the examination of the mother bear, it became apparent why she and her cub had not been in a winter den. The adult bear had multiple injuries including a badly broken jaw, and a bone fracture and infected wound on her leg. X-rays of the mother bear showed badly shattered bones. The injuries were at least several months old, which means they likely occurred before the bears would have retired to a den for the winter. At 95 pounds, the bear was severely under weight. Eating must have been extremely difficult if not impossible for her judging from the extent of her jaw injury. X-rays also revealed the cause of her injuries. The bright spots on the films were unmistakably bullet fragments. She had been shot.

There was no hope of repairing the severe jaw fracture that the mother bear had suffered, and so she was humanely euthanized. Her cub, however, is now safe. Although the cub's mother was taken from her, she will not be alone. She will be housed with another orphaned, young bear brought in to PAWS this winter who is recovering from a broken leg. The two cubs will spend the remainder of the winter at the PAWS Wildlife Center, fattening up and preparing for a return to the wild in the spring.