The Environmental Conference held at IslandWood on Saturday,
Sept. 29, was the seventh in a series of events that have been
organized annually by the Association of Bainbridge Communities
(ABC) and other environment-oriented groups. Each one seems to top
the one before it in the size of its audience and the strength of
its program.
Two things struck me at the outset. Standing in line to pick up
my badge, I was talking with a woman who had come over from Seattle
with a carful of young people. She was visiting IslandWood for the
first time, and hadn’t been to earlier conferences. She asked me
about the sponsoring organizations; I found myself saying that just
as the natural world is a complex web of interdependent organisms
and processes, the groups devoted to studying, conserving, and
improving our environment form a complex web. Twenty different
groups and enterprises are listed in this year’s program
brochure.
The other thing that came into focus when everyone gathered in
IslandWood’s great hall was the presence of many students –
teenagers and younger kids. At least one third of the audience
stood up when their presence was acknowledged during Karen
Salsbury’s welcoming remarks.
The program wasn’t designed to appeal specifically to the next
generation, but several speakers expressed gratitude for their
precocious interest in environmental issues. They will follow the
examples set by today’s adults, and they’ll have our unfinished
business on their hands. Many young people are ahead of their
elders in their understanding of the issues and the possibilities
for change.
The keynote presentation was a show of photographs with a lively
commentary by Bill Curtsinger, drawing on his book, “Extreme
Nature.” In a career spanning more than three decades, Mr.
Curtsinger has photographed wildlife in marine environments
(surface, shore, and underwater); most of the austere and beautiful
pictures he showed were from arctic and antarctic expeditions.
Other speakers focused on the aquatic life in Puget Sound and
the impacts upon it of our activities on land.
John Cambalik, regional coordinator for the Puget Sound
Partnership, described the structure and functions of this new
state agency. He explained how the Partnership is developing an
integrated and comprehensive approach to all of the Puget Sound
Basin – land as well as water. The goal is to achieve a healthy
Puget Sound by 2020: the 2020 Action Agenda will prioritize
actions, identify funding, and report results.
The Partnership’s leadership council may recommend changes in
legislation: it does not have regulatory authority, but it has some
“power of the purse,” and through the legislature it will influence
funding for existing and new programs.
Jim Brennan and Wayne Daley took turns describing the prevailing
conditions in Bainbridge Island’s streams, shorelines, and
nearshore habitat, primarily with reference to anadromous fish
populations. Jim Brennan, who was recognized later in the program
as ABC’s Environmentalist of the Year, was particularly
effective.
In a matter of minutes, without hurrying and without vague
generalizations, Brennan explained how the different parts of our
ecosystem, from upland and shore areas to the subtidal and deep
water zones, fit together. The most “productive” parts of the
system are on land, and Puget Sound is a young ecosystem, far from
equilibrium, with everything in motion.
Within this system, the roles and responsibilities of citizens
are tremendously important. With our population growing, the rate
of growth is a matter of concern, and the forms that growth takes
are even more consequential. He asked the audience, “Is there a
shared community vision of the environment that we want to pass on
to future generations?” He observed that we must weigh the costs of
responding to the crisis in which we find ourselves against the
costs of not responding.
Best available science is supposed to guide policy-making, but
Brennan observed that science cannot provide us with a basis for
choosing the goals we will pursue, as individuals and as a
community. When we talked briefly during a break in the program, he
expressed a hope that our community will be able to determine
during the next few years, without guesswork and wishful thinking,
the carrying capacity of our island. That will require both
scientific calculations and some difficult ethical / political
discussions of how to live within our means.
Betsy Peabody and Shawn Larson, who spoke after the mid-morning
break, used photographs to illustrate their expert knowledge of
aquatic species found in Puget Sound.
Peabody is fascinated with shellfish, large and small. I learned
from her that the native Olympia oyster can be found today in a few
spots on the beaches of Fletcher Bay and Blakely Harbor.
Remembering my own boyhood experience going after geoducks on the
lowest tides of the summer, I can enthusiastically second her
observation that nobody should graduate from high school without
the experience of a geoduck dig.
With special attention given to the endangered species and
“species of concern,” Shawn Larson described marine mammals
(several whales, seals and sea lions, sea otters and the more
common river otters), and some uncommon birds, fish, and a colorful
octopus.
The next to the last speaker was Peter Namtvedt Best, of the
COBI Department of Planning and Community Development; he carries
most of the responsibility for shoreline permitting, restoration
efforts, the stewardship program, and salmon recovery efforts.
The Shoreline Management Master Program, adopted in 1996, is
scheduled to be updated by 2011, and beginning next year, Best will
be deeply involved in that process. The involvement of a
well-informed citizenry will be crucial to success in the SMMP
update. Aware that it was almost time for lunch, Best provided an
overview of the issues and policy considerations that inform
current efforts to preserve and restore the Island’s shoreline and
nearshore ecology.
With 50 percent of the island’s shoreline armored with some type
of bulkhead, and with only 2 and a half miles of shoreline publicly
owned, preservation and protection efforts operate within
constraints. With new shoreline management guidelines in place, the
SMMP update process will be guided by several principles. There
should be no net loss of ecological functions; consistency in
regulations and enforcement is essential; cumulative impacts will
be analyzed and will inform planning for restoration.
Best used a map identifying segments of the shoreline that he
referred to as “reaches,” defined by common, linked, or
interrelated chemical and biological characteristics. Ecologically
based planning along shorelines begins with reference to these
broad reaches and takes a context-specific approach to parts of the
whole, seeking to enhance the system’s integrity.
After an excellent lunch in IslandWood’s dining room,
participants in the conference went their separate ways. Three
field trips were offered; I chose to take a two-hour boat tour of
Eagle Harbor, and came away with a greatly enhanced understanding
of our community’s principal harbor.
Eagle Harbor is many things to many people. It has been and will
remain what ecologists call a “sink,” but it isn’t a dead zone;
many efforts are being made to improve its health as an aquatic
environment. Eagle Harbor adds value to the property that many
citizens and business owners enjoy along the shore and in upland
areas; it is also a commons to which the idea of individual
ownership does not apply. It is a place where governmental
authority and regulation are necessary, but interminably
problematic.
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