Beating The Oil and Tanker Combine By Eating Chocolate (Ship) Brownies

Good folks at the San Juan County Fair Safe Shipping booth are selling brownies in four flavors, including Bakken Shale Brownies with Caramel Crude.  Funds raised this week and weekend go to spreading the message of Safe Shipping in the Salish Sea.

San Juan Islanders For Safe Shipping write: “Our goal is to raise awareness of the increasing number of proposed terminal projects that will increase vessel traffic and multiply the risk of oil spills in the waterways just outside our front doors -- the waters that wash up on our favorite beaches. We are especially concerned about increases in tanker traffic transporting crude oil -- crude oil spills are the most damaging and most difficult to cleanup. 

“The specific target of our action at the County Fair is the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project -- poised to increase the number of tankers seven-fold per month. We islanders need to talk to Canada and let them know we won't let that happen without them putting the safest of precautions in place. Right now, Canada is not capable of effectively cleaning up an oil spill, and that is just not acceptable to us -- especially when we stand to lose nearly 80% of our county's economy should such a disaster happen. And for what? 50 permanent jobs for Canadians and hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to Kinder Morgan....”

OK, maybe it’ll take more than eating brownies but all that we do to save our Salish Sea should at least include brownies. Eat on!


--Mike Sato

#SSEC14 Day 3: Now What?

Guillemot Group, l-r: Kelly Zupich, Govinda Rosling, Frances Wood

Like all good things, the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference came to an end on Friday, and it no doubt left those who experienced the entire three days of speeches, presentations and festivities exhilarated and as exhausted as conference organizers. Even for those who came for a day, the proceedings proved edifying and sometimes entertaining.

One can’t experience everything and as with all collections and compilations whether it be music, candy or research, one’s tastes and interests prevail. Maybe it’s a feeling of feeling full but not satisfied, that there was too much “social” science and not enough “hard” science, too much “critter” and not enough “processes.” In some of the mixing and matching, it was good to sit with both “dirt” and “critter” scientists discussing the range of Elwha research.

The conference provides a snapshot of some of the science being done in the Salish Sea. Include the posters presented in addition to the presentations and it’s a pretty rich snapshot.

To call out one example: Frances Wood and the Guillemot Research Group authored the poster, “Breeding Pigeon Guillemots on Whidbey Island: A Six Year Study.” It’s one of many good examples of solid research clearly presented and, while it may not look as sexy or dynamic as a talk before a crowded room, it’s an important part of the snapshot as well.

But so what? I love the science and can lose myself in the science and forget that most of my time is spent thinking about the policies and politics of saving the Salish Sea.

In the plenary session that began the conference, David Marshall of the Fraser Basin Council hoped to get a positive response when he asked how many participants had used information published in a previous report on the state of the Salish Sea. No one raised their hand. Uh oh, wrong question.

Nope, right question. Because it would be wonderful if the findings of the Guillemot Research Group were to be used by local officials and community members and activists in doing local land use planning and regulation. It would be great at the next conference if the question, “Did what we learned in 2014 make a difference,” were greeted by a sea of raised hands.

Conference proceedings will be published at a later date and conference science reporters will be publishing articles on conference highlights. Past conference proceedings are found at the conference web site.

--Mike Sato

#SSEC14 Day 2: What Will It Take to ‘Save’ the Salish Sea?

“Shared responsibility,” “science informing policy,” “an educated public,” “citizen science”.... Clearly there isn’t going to be one silver bullet that will take us into a future where the Salish Sea is restored and protected. One reason to have a conference like the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference  is to identify what’s working, what’s not, and where gaps in strategy and tactics are.

Western Washington University and conference organizers have done a great job this year. I’ve sat through plenary speeches and presentations but have been haunted by Western’s president’s Bruce Shepard’s bold words coming back to me. Shepard said, “" ... if in decades ahead, we are as white as we are today, we will have failed as a university."

Ignore for awhile the yahoo responses to his well-considered admonishment and think about how what he said applies to conferences like this in the quest to ‘Save’ the Salish Sea.

The men and women, scientists, students, activists and government staff here are talented, smart and enthusiastic. But where is the racial diversity that reflects the changing demographic of the Salish Sea?

The lack of diversity in the environmental movement is something that, over the years, we talk about, wring our hands about and in most cases throw up our hands in frustration.

The issue, of course, is that the future complexion of the region will be changing and unless the complexion of the people who are working to “Save” the Salish Sea changes to reflect those changes, we will have failed.

We can’t wait and expect the ‘people of color’ to come and join us. President Shepard understands that. Smart companies have their eyes out for budding engineers; successful sport teams are on the lookout for star prospects. It’s called recruitment and nurturing the future talent. It’s what President Shepard is talking about.

Maybe it’s like being the skunk at this fine party but I’ll raise the issue for the planners of the next conference. How about some presentation tracks and candid discussion that address straight on the issue of diversity in our ‘shared responsibility’ to ‘save’ the Salish Sea?

--Mike Sato

#SSEC14 Day 1: Will Science Inform Policy and Politics?

#SSEC14 is the Twitter hashtag for the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference http://www.wwu.edu/salishseaconference/ that kicked off on Wednesday in Seattle at the Washington State Convention Center. The three-day conference brings together scientists, academics, tribes, NGOs, and government from both sides of the WA/BC border this year around the theme of how the Salish Sea is “Our Shared Responsibility.”

It’s good to see the prominence given to the Salish Sea Tribes and First Nations. Attendees were welcome by Suquamish Chief Leonard Forsman and the plenary keynote address was given by Grand Chief Ed Day of the Ti’azt’en Nation. It takes a chief of a natives people to give the gravitas of what these lands and waters once were, have now become, and will become for generations to come. Respect and responsibility, according to Chief Day, come in addition to rights.

It’s been a number of years since I’d attended this conference which was once known as the Puget Sound/Georgia Basin Research Conference. It’s heartening that many of the attendees are young folks, the future of the Salish Sea. I think they’ll be able to sustain their interest and enthusiasm for the three-day stretch.

The theme of science informing policy and politics has always been a theme of this conference. David Marshall of the Georgia Basin Council spoke of how science informed the restoration of the Brittania Mine area. Along those lines, he asked attendees to answer three questions by the time the conference was over:

• -Give another example of how science and policy successfully went together.
• -Identify a specific project that could influence policy.
• -Predict what the Salish Sea will be like in 10 years.

If science could inform policy and politics, I think the Salish Sea might have a chance to be restored to health and protected.

I ended the day sitting in on a session about fish consumption rates and the associated issue of more stringent pollution standards to protect public health. That issue has the science clearly on one side with tribes and public health officials and industry on the other side— and the governor sitting somewhere in the middle.

We want a victory thereto be one as the example of both what Chief Day says about respect and responsibility and what David Marshall wants as an example of how science and policy successfully went together.

--Mike Sato

Revisiting “Extinction Is Not An Option”

Quinault fishing (Edward Curtis, 1913)

Remember Gary Locke? He gave a fine speech in 1998 as governor after our Puget Sound Chinook salmon were listed under the Endangered Species Act. He talked about the challenge facing us in recovering the species. He ended with the dramatic, “We cannot fail. Extinction is not an option.”

I’d been thinking about then-Governor Locke’s dramatic oratory (it’s a good speech— you ought to read it) this week while scanning the news and lamenting the collapse of the Fraser River sockeye run, cheering the anticipated arrival of the Puget Sound humpy (pink salmon) run, and learning from Bill Sheets in The Herald that “Snohomish County waters still rich with salmon, trout.”

So, glass half empty or glass half full? On the road to recovery or on the road to extinction?

Of course, what Governor Locke was referring to was recovery of wild Puget Sound Chinook. And there’s been a lot of money, time and effort spent on restoration projects large and small. We’ve been guided by a Statewide Strategy to Recover Salmon and, in Puget Sound, by an Action Agenda.

The Puget Sound Partnership’s Vital Signs Indicator for Wild Chinook Salmon reports that “Chinook salmon in the Sound now are about one-third as abundant as they were in 1908” and “For the 22 remaining populations of Puget Sound Chinook salmon, one increased and one declined in abundance from 2006 to 2010... The total number of Chinook salmon has not increased, and most populations remain well short of their recovery goals.”

The best that can be said? “Nonetheless, the fact that we have any natural-origin Chinook left is testament to the success of our restoration and harvest reduction work so far.”

Do we know what we’re doing, what we’re supposed to be doing to recover our salmon? Maybe not.

This Wednesday there’s a ceremony at the Seattle Aquarium launching a Washington-British Columbia effort called The Salish Sea Marine Survival Project spearheaded by Long Live the Kings and the Pacific Salmon Foundation bringing together “US and Canadian federal, provincial, state, tribal and academic scientists and managers for an ambitious, precedent-setting new initiative to improve understanding of salmon and steelhead survival in the Salish Sea.”

Why? Because, as their media advisory says, “Something alarming is happening in the shared inland marine waters of the Salish Sea: salmon and steelhead are dying. What's the cause of this mortality? We don't know. The research hasn't been done. Without that knowledge, our substantial efforts to recover these populations and provide sustainable fishing may be for nothing.”

Honestly, I don’t know what I don’t know. What I do know is that Washington state propaganda about salmon recovery can be found in a very polished, 10-minute film, State of Salmon: Restoring a Washington Icon, produced for the state’s Recreation and Conservation Office.

I know there must be more to salmon recovery than what’s shown in the film, although there is some reference to “making the tough decisions every day,” whatever those decisions are supposed to be. The words “regulation” and “growth” and “pollution” are never mentioned.  Even Governor Locke and the state Joint Natural Resources Cabinet knew in 1999 that tough decisions would have to be made and carried out regarding hydroelectric dams, fish hatcheries, reduced harvest, and protection and restoration of critical spawning and rearing habitats. And the real big ticket item would be reducing the flow of toxic chemicals from our homes and businesses into the estuaries of the Sound.
Regarding salmon recovery, your lifestyle most likely isn’t much different than it was in 1999  when extinction was not an option. Maybe we’re living like how we lived in the madness of an Iraq War that never touched our daily lives unless our family was serving our country there. What was the point of that awful war anyway, what was accomplished for the good? When it’s business as usual while we go about saving our iconic wild Pacific salmon, when there’s no sacrifice required, what can you expect to be really accomplished? That salmon populations may not get better but hopefully they won’t get any worse?

C’mon, we can do better than that.

--Mike Sato

Rio+20 and the Salish Sea

Twenty years ago Washington and British Columbia activist organized themselves as the sans boundary coalition and faxed a declaration to the Rio summit, 1992.

I recounted this Sound & Straits ‘92 “People’s Agreement” in this blog last fall on October 20 and on October 24 in advance of the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference— and, like your crazy aunt, I will bring out the family heirlooms again as Rio+20 convenes.

The “People’s Agreement” averred:

“WE, THE PEOPLE of the Sound and Straits, in pledging to work together to restore the ecological and economic health of our home, DECLARE THAT:

• The salmon shall be the symbol and indicator of the health of our waters, for in saving the salmon we shall save ourselves.
• The most protective environmental standards shall be applied as the minimal standards throughout the region.
• The Sound and Straits shall be a Pollution Free Zone by the year 2011.
• Bold and innovative solutions that protect our resources shall be recognized and rewarded.
• The people of the region shall be informed and involved in all aspects of governance of the region.

And this is what what we thought in 1992 needed to be done to hold "the governments of Canada, the United States, British Columbia and the state of Washington accountable.”

• Timely, effective implementation of all environmental agreements.
• Restoration of salmon habitat, as required by treaty.
• Initiating an International Joint Commission investigation and actions to restore and maintain native salmon throughout the region.
• Applying the most stringent environmental protections on either side of the boarder as minimums throughout the region.
• Involving the public in all decisions which affect the Sound and Straits.
• Creating new jobs for military personnel and redirecting resources to more urgent social, economic and environmental problems.
• Protecting the ecological resources critical to all life in the region through creation of a biosphere/sanctuary regional framework.
• Protecting life and habitat through safe shipping and safe oil transport.

We hadn’t yet become activists around climate change and ocean acidification; we had a pretty full agenda that we wanted federal, tribal, state, provincial and local government— in consultation with their people — to take action on. And we thought in ecosystems, across borders, across political boundaries.

Maybe some would say the progress on the Sound & Straits Salish Sea agenda is a glass half-full; I’d say it was a glass more than half-empty.

I think we let our children down when I listen to Severn Cullis-Suzuki, daughter of David Suzuki. Twelve-year old Severn in 1992 addressed the Earth Summit delegates: “We've come 5,000 miles to tell you adults you must change your ways."

In a Vancouver Sun interview a week ago (Twenty years after Rio warning, we're still in peril ), Craig and Marc Kielburger write that Severn “became known as ‘the girl who silenced the world for five minutes.’”

"’I look back at those documents that came out of Rio, and they were pretty amazing,’ Cullis-Suzuki says. ‘Great promises were made at Rio, then it kind of fell off people's agenda.’

“The hope and promise were short-lived. Cullis-Suzuki recalls that, in the years following the Earth Summit, the global economy slipped into recession and economic constraints meant the environment was no longer a priority.

“Cullis-Suzuki notes the parallels to today, as economic woes again displace the environment as a top concern for world leaders.

“[T]he 2012 Earth Summit will last only three days. U.S. President Barack Obama will not be there, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper has not indicated if he will attend.”

We let them and ourselves down, didn’t we?

The Victoria Times-Colonist reports that “Instead of clean energy, food, the oceans and other topics scheduled for debate at Rio+20, as the summit is known, political focus is attuned to a teetering Europe, turmoil in the Middle East and a presidential campaign in the United States.  (Environment expectations low for Rio+20 )

Without leadership on environmental protection and restoration, we’ll go nowhere. But we also know that when the people lead, leaders follow. I’d like to think that it’s never too late, that maybe we were older then— and we’re younger than that now.

--Mike Sato

Travel Notes: Islands in the Salish Sea in Brussels

Brussels public art

Our lives are global when we least expect them to be.

A few weeks ago I answered an inquiry about the history of the Orca Pass International Stewardship Area, a non-governmental stewardship initiative launched in the late 1990s in the transboundary waters of the Salish Sea. In the course of that email exchange, I learned that researcher Henriette Bastrup-Birk resides in Brussels.

Henriette has been a tireless researcher working on her doctorate, tracking the educational, social and governmental aspects of Washington-British Columbia transborder relations in the Salish Sea. She’s attended the biennial Puget Sound-Georgia Basin research conferences and has met with many of us who have worked the ‘transboundary’ issues over the years.

Last evening, after a wonderful dinner in the home of Henriette and her husband Peter, I perused a copy of Islands in the Salish Sea by Sheila Hamilton and Juli Stevenson, published in 2005 and reprinted in 2007.

I admit: I am easily overcome by juxtapositions of time and space. We spoke of Denmark, London, Portland, Honolulu— and Bellingham, Brussels and Vancouver. I am practicing: I will yet to become a true citizen of the world.

--Mike Sato

Saving the Salish Sea Part 3

(Mary Lynn Stephanson)

I love to say that the whales, salmon and eagles don’t know that on one side of a border people use dollars and cents and on the other they use loonies and toonies. The fact that there is a border in the water dividing what’s now called the Salish Sea makes all the difference to the critters’ health and future.

Native tribes and conservation groups have always thought of the shared waters of British Columbia and Washington as one ecosystem. The governments of Canada, British Columbia, the United States and Washington state came together as the Georgia Basin/Puget Sound Work Group in 1992 and, in 1994, the US/Canada Marine Science Panel issued its report and recommendations.

The scientists found that the most important things to do were to minimize habitat loss, to establish marine protected areas, to protect marine plants and animals, and to minimize the introduction of invasive species.

Now, 17 years later, what do the scientists say the governments’ track record has been in moving forward on these four most important recommendations?

Do we have as much critical habitat today as we did in 1994? If less, how much less?

Do we have more acres of marine protected areas established than we did in 1994? If so, how many more acres?

There certainly are more bald eagles, seals and sea lions but what about the populations of other marine mammals, birds, fish, shellfish and sea grasses? Are they more abundant than they were in 1994? If so, how much more abundant? If not, how much less?

Are there more or less invasive species in the Salish Sea today than in 1994? How much less or how much more?

I’m told that the science is much better now than it was in 1994 and that there is a much better scientific basis for doing the things that need to be done to protect the health of the Salish Sea.

But, to be honest, the whales, salmon and eagles don’t care about science and most people don’t either. Maybe it’s simplistic but what counts for whales, salmon and eagles— and for most people-- is results, not studies and plans.

Use those dollars and cents and loonies and toonies to protect and restore critical habitats, establish marine protected areas, protect marine plants and animals and stop the invasion of alien species. Put that money to erasing that border for the whales, salmon and eagles. That’s our legacy for the Salish Sea.

--Mike Sato

Warming Up For The Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference Part 1

Turn Point (lighthousefriends.com)

The Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference, formerly known as the Puget Sound/Georgia Basin Research Conference, convenes in Vancouver, BC, October 25-27.  I won’t be going this year but, like holidays, birthdays and anniversaries, the biennial conference occasions many memories.

Looking back 20 years at the time of the U.N. Rio Conference on the environment, I am struck by how doggedly correct — and presumptuous — we were in declaring that “WE, THE PEOPLE of the Sound and Straits, in pledging to work together to restore the ecological and economic health of our home, DECLARE THAT:

1. The salmon shall be the symbol and indicator of the health of our waters, for in saving the salmon we shall save ourselves.
2. The most protective environmental standards shall be applied as the minimal standards throughout the region.
3. The Sound and Straits shall be a Pollution Free Zone by the year 2011.
4. Bold and innovative solutions that protect our resources shall be recognized and rewarded.
5. The people of the region shall be informed and involved in all aspects of governance of the region.
   

Go ahead, laugh at that delivery date for the Pollution Free Zone, but this was the declaration part of what was called the Sound & Straits ‘92 “People’s Agreement” developed by about 40 souls affiliated with U.S. and Canadian native, environmental, labor, peace and other organizations.

I don’t know what kind of silvery words will be used next week when the Ecosystem Conference is convened and no doubt there will be many, but there sure were some golden words in our proclamation:

“The Sound and Straits are a single region of common waters and resources, and strong ties exist among its peoples. The Canada-United States border is a boundary invisible to the region’s water, air and wildlife. As people of the region, we see no border in committing ourselves to the future environmental, social and economic health of the Sound and Straits. We seek to broaden our numbers through the power of individual and corporate responsibility and to include all peoples and organizations sharing the concern that our children inherit a just and sustainable future.

“In the context of global environmental deterioration, we call upon people everywhere to recognize our common global future, to cross boundaries and to work together toward solutions. We recognize that the most serious threat to international security is not military aggression but global environmental collapse.”

So what’s changed for the better, what’s changed for the worse, what’s been ignored in thinking ‘transboundary’ in the last 20 years? Good practice warm-up for next week’s conference.

--Mike Sato