Bainbridge Conversation

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.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 10:53 am by bainbridge-conversation and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.