Where the Cascades Meet the Sea

Ken Wilcox is a writer, publisher and trail planner living in Bellingham. In March, he published Harvey Manning's epic conservation history, "Wilderness Alps: Conservation and Conflict in Washington's North Cascades." For more information, visit http://www.nwwildbooks.com.

In the Summer 2006 issue of the North Cascades Conservation Council’s journal The Wild Cascades, the late Harvey Manning shared a concise history of land protection on state lands, meager as it is, and advised us all to “Take a look at the 2006 map of public land ownership in the state.” And then, he said, “Do a bit of dreaming.”

If you look at that map carefully, you find that on the coast just south of Bellingham lies what may be the finest opportunity in the greater Puget Sound region to do that bit of dreaming.

This area, of course, is known as the Chuckanut Mountains, and it includes a 4,800-acre forest on Blanchard Mountain that is managed by the Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR). This coastal urban wildland we casually refer to as the Chuckanuts includes nearly 10,000 acres of recovering forest and lies smack between two of the state’s fastest growing population centers — Mount Vernon-Burlington and Bellingham.

It’s the kind of place that 1,001 other medium or large cities in America would nearly die for if they knew what we had. Think of Harvey’s famed Issaquah Alps in King County — but on the coast. It’s that good.

In one contiguous block of wannabe future ancient forest there are almost 1,500 acres of city and county parkland, 2,800 acres of state park (Larrabee), a couple hundred acres of Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife land and 4,800 acres of DNR land on that gem otherwise known as Blanchard Mountain.

There are also a few thousand acres of private forestland, some with relatively high ecological and recreational values. Some of the latter could potentially be acquired to complete a more perfect whole. In total, it’s a 10,000-acre wild place.

By comparison, the DNR’s West Tiger Mountain Natural Resources Conservation Area extends across 4,500 acres, or roughly half of the 10,000-acre “preserve” known as the Issaquah Alps. Adjacent to that, another 10,000-acre block of DNR land is managed primarily for timber. If we had that much DNR land at Blanchard, we could probably tolerate chain saws buzzing across two-thirds of it. But we don’t. It’s 4,800 acres and it’s all special. It ought to be saved.

As various maps and an hour or two of study make clear, there is nothing else on the entire east shore of the greater Puget Sound region that even comes close to what we have here. Glance at the population density map (page 11) that accompanies this article and it’s easy to understand why this patch of green along the coast is so significant from a larger regional perspective.

Geographically and geologically, the Chuckanuts are anomalous: the only place in the Cascade Range, from Canada to northern California, where the foothills of the mountains extend all the way to the sea. The second map (facing page) illustrates that pretty well also.

The Chuckanut range, including Blanchard, is, by far, the least populated and least developed coastal area of its size anywhere from Vancouver to Tumwater. From space, it actually looks dark here at night.

It is also within an area known as the Puget Lowland Forest Ecoregion that includes all of the once-forested lowlands from the Fraser River to the Columbia — an area that the World Wildlife Fund considers to be in “critical” need of new protected areas.

As a stressful drive along I-5 will easily attest, the vast majority of this ecoregion has been severely changed from pre-settlement times. The best of what’s left, it turns out, is right there in the Chuckanuts.

Wildlife habitats are diverse and significant. The area supports the only known coastal nesting area in the greater Puget Sound region for marbled murrelets, a threatened seabird that only nests in big old trees, most of which are far inland where most of the remaining old growth is.

Migrating raptors, turkey vultures, and a host of neotropical migrant birds like warblers and flycatchers use the area for nesting or feeding. Once, while munching lunch atop a spectacular 100-foot high sandstone cliff on the Raptor Ridge Trail, we watched ravens, vultures, eagles, red-tails and marsh hawks fly over while a pygmy owl tooted at us from behind.

There is much prime habitat here for western toads, a species that has declined precipitously over the past decade. A sensitive bat species spends its winter hibernation hanging out in caves and crevices at the base of Blanchard’s 300-foot high cliffs. We have rare moths and butterflies here, as well as rubber boas and alligator lizards. The occasional cougar or black bear is known to ramble through. Eager beavers have helped engineer an extensive matrix of ponds linked to numerous natural lakes and wetlands.

There are rare plant communities, carnivorous plants, an extremely rare lichen, and some impressive and maturing forests that have naturally regenerated since first logged in the early 1900s — quite unlike the single-species Douglas-fir plantations that dominate other cut-over lands in the region. A patch of old-growth forest also remains, with a few trees up to nine feet in diameter.

Imperiled salmon and steelhead utilize many of the area’s creeks. Grebes and loons winter in nearshore marine waters where shellfish beds are also regionally significant. Grey whales and sea lions are occasional visitors.

In fact, one could make a pretty good argument that protecting Blanchard Mountain and the rest of the Chuckanuts would contribute substantially to the Governor’s Partnership for Puget Sound, which among other things is supposed to support “priority projects to restore damaged forests, rivers, shorelines and marine waters.”

Of course, we can spend millions (or billions) of dollars restoring the places we’ve mucked up already, or we can spend far less just taking care of those few good places that are still intact — like Blanchard Mountain and the Chuckanuts.

Publicly-owned park land in the Chuckanuts is spread out in an amorphous blob with some weird tentacles, but it’s reasonably secure. The private lands, of course, are not and will likely remain in active commercial forestry, at least over the short run.

Most of the land owned by timber companies has been logged during the past two or three decades, and there is pressure there and on neighboring Lookout and Galbraith Mountains to the east of I-5 to turn some of these lands over to private development. Let us hope the legislature can be persuaded to help purchase a few key parcels to add to the parks, while we also maintain a certain level of active forestry which can help keep us from losing those lands to urban sprawl.

Unlike public parklands in the Chuckanuts, the bulk of Blanchard Mountain (all of which is in Skagit County) is not at all considered secure for public use and enjoyment into the future. In fact, the DNR intends to intensify logging activity there later this year and next, unless the public ultimately convinces them to do otherwise. Logging roads will penetrate the wilder roadless portions, crossing numerous trails, and otherwise disrupting a prized recreational experience for tens of thousands of trail users annually.

Most of the environmental and economic benefits — and they are substantial — of protecting Blanchard Mountain in its natural state have not been seriously studied or acknowledged by DNR. Although the agency and others, including Conservation Northwest, cooperated on a fiscal impact study several years ago to explore the benefits of logging versus not logging Blanchard, the study was glaringly incomplete, the results predictably skewed in favor of logging.

A recent effort to bring loggers and conservationists to the table to work out a compromise appeared to have failed at the group’s final meeting in early January. Although loggers and Conservation Northwest and others supported a loose agreement laid on the table at that meeting, many if not most activists who have been dogging the Blanchard issue for the last 15 years believe the plan does not do enough to protect the mountain.

While not opposed to some logging, the pro-conservation conservationists (as opposed to the “quid-pro-quo” conservationists) believe the process itself forced an outcome that strongly, and unfairly, favored timber interests.

Language in the agreement suggests that conservationists must begin lobbying our legislators to maintain, or preferably, increase logging in local forests, not just on state lands managed by DNR, but on private lands as well, and not just at Blanchard, but potentially everywhere. Even the national forest is included in the agreement as a place where logging needs to be revived.

In exchange for a small and weakly protected 1,600-acre maximum “core area” on Blanchard (where new roads and limited logging would still be allowed), conservationists would have to accept a policy of increased timber harvest on national forest lands where logging was severely curtailed more than a decade ago to protect the spotted owl and to help recover some battered federal forests.

Asking conservation-minded people to lobby for increased logging is a little like asking a local grocer to advocate for a new Walmart.

Conservation Northwest and others have argued that “ecological thinning” is needed to help expedite the recovery of old-growth forest ecosystems in areas that were hammered by widespread clearcut logging in the 1960s through 1980s.

That sounds sort of okay on the surface, yet many forest experts either disagree on various aspects of these thinning proposals or acknowledge that much is still unknown about how these ecosystems might respond to large-scale thinning and removal of biomass, disruptions to fungal and invertebrate communities, impacts on nutrients and soils, and a host of other issues which may result from what might otherwise be a well-intended thinning strategy.

We hear about the notion of mimicking natural disturbance and how various disturbance regimes are something forests can handle. Yet we are reminded by others that forests that were severely disturbed by fire, wind, earthquakes, landslides, volcanoes, tsunamis or what have you did not generally involve the wholesale extraction of tree boles, the mega-biomass that helps sustain food webs and nutrient cycles.

There is even less certainty around the ability of the various agencies to actually design and implement ecologically beneficial logging operations cost-effectively.

While some limited “eco-thinning” seems worth exploring as a way to learn about old-growth forest recovery and perhaps even accomplish some good things, it should not be carried out on the scale that some are suggesting — and certainly not at Blanchard Mountain, at least in this observer’s opinion. If you have hiked on Blanchard recently, you might wonder how we can possibly offer much “help” in thinning a place this gorgeous.

The answer to the Blanchard question might just be what Harvey alluded to in his recent article: a new Natural Resource Conservation Area, or NRCA — or some other designation that offers permanent protection. Trust status of the lands involved may require a creative land exchange as part of the deal, but it’s entirely feasible in a region of the state that is bereft of designated NRCAs.

In mainland King and Snohomish Counties, for example, more than 42,000 acres of NRCAs have been established, including West Tiger Mountain, Mount Si, Rattlesnake Mountain, Grieder Ridge, Morning Star and Mount Pilchuck. In Skagit County, the total acreage of designated NRCAs on the mainland is zero. Whatcom County has one NRCA totalling a whopping 137 acres.

Between the two northern counties where the DNR maintains an enormous land base, one can rightfully imagine that something more than 137 acres might be worthy of protection. NRCA-designated land in Whatcom and Skagit Counties amounts to three-tenths of 1 percent of what’s been set aside in Snohomish and King Counties. Something’s wrong with that picture.

You can help by letting DNR know, as well as your own state legislators (who may be asked to support the Blanchard agreement), that the current pro-logging strategy for Blanchard does not even come close to representing the public interest in long-term protection of this unique place.

The lore, according to Harvey, says that Blanchard was once known as Elephant Mountain. It’s a fitting name, given how difficult it’s been to get the DNR to budge, although I’m still looking for the elephant. I’d hoped to ask Harvey for a clue about that, but then he up and departed this world in November for sweeter meadows on higher ground.

So make the trip. Take a little time to explore the place, whether by trail, or from the slow lane along Chuckanut Drive, or from the DNR road to the spectacular overlook above Samish Bay. Go look for the elephant. Learn first-hand, if you haven’t already, why this area deserves to be designated an NRCA or perhaps even a new state park.

Maybe we could call it Edward R. Murrow State Park (assuming the family agrees). It’s a little known fact that Murrow, awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and an honorary knighthood from Great Britain for his groundbreaking journalism, spent his boyhood years hunting ducks on Samish Bay and playing and hiking in the woods on Blanchard Mountain.

To learn more, contact Ken (marmotlegs@yahoo.com) or browse more maps, photos, and info at these Web sites:

http://www.chuckanutconservancy.org

http://www.blanchardmountain.org

http://www.chuckanutmpd.org. §