Protecting the Watershed Through Education and Hard Work

Evan Knappenberger is a student at Whatcom Community College and an Iraq War veteran living in Bellingham, Wash. He spent some time with a Whatcom County work crew this summer.

Whatcom County, with its many hundreds of miles of watershed, has suffered a steady decrease in overall streamside well-being since the introduction of deforestation and agriculture almost two centuries ago. As the general health of the land, crops, and quality of life is inevitably tied to the health of the waterways, care must be taken to maintain their health.

Frank Corey is the resource coordinator at the Whatcom Conservation District (which partners with the Work Center) and a leader tackling the multifaceted issues of land usage, sustainability and water quality.

The problems facing Whatcom County’s various biomes are all unavoidably linked to watershed health. Some of the major crises facing our environment are nonnative species invasion, bacterial and chemical pollution, land degradation and destruction of farm and forest land. To Corey, these are all part of a bigger picture.

“It’s all about sustainability,” Corey said. “Stewardship of the land is important. It’s all about getting balanced.”

To mediate the problems of high bacterial counts, soil erosion and aquatic habitat destruction requires a perspective that can account for all three at once. Many times this means a solution (drainage maintenance, reconstruction and planting) that private landowners are reluctant to implement. Often, landowners are skeptical of outsiders telling them how to run their private land.

One of the things Corey said he has learned in his time at the Conservation District is that dealing with landowners can require a perspective that transcends his own view on environmental health.

“People sometimes have different views,” he said. “We use incentives and education. People are not necessarily interested in positive environmental change. Oftentimes the riparian planting we do with work crews is mitigation for long-overdue maintenance on ditches.”

Because of agricultural runoff and permanent changes made to the watershed, water quality and natural habitat for salmon are being degraded. Balancing agricultural needs with watershed needs is a critical requirement now, according to the Conservation District Web site.

“We still have a long way to go in finding ways to maintain the drainage critical to agriculture without impacting fish,” Corey said.

Government regulation has generally benefited local waterways, but many privately-owned watercourses in Whatcom County are still in need of work, and the problem remains a serious one. Often, taxpayer-funded leasing of land along waterways is necessary in order to convince landowners to allow enhancement work along those waterways. Incentives, monetary or otherwise, sometimes aren’t obvious to landowners at first glance; educating them about the benefits of watershed stewardship is just as important, Corey said.

One good example of this involves crop destruction by birds. Farmers may worry that waterway enhancements through the planting method will bring with them birds, which they blame for major crop damage, according to the Conservation District manual. This perceived loss of crops contributes to their reluctance to maintain their waterways, Corey said.

This is a major concern, especially to the large group of berry farmers in northwest Washington. Despite farmers’ concerns, the reality is that native trees (like the common willow) tend to attract mostly native songbird species that do not destroy crops.

Starlings and other nonnative species cause a majority of crop damage, which is actually reduced if native habitat is restored along field boundaries1. Educating landowners to this reality is one way of helping them avoid losses, and is necessary to getting their approval for improvement of their property.

Funds for waterside planting can be found in unexpected places, Corey said.

“Lots of our conservation funding comes from the Washington State Department of Ecology for water quality. We get funding from the Whatcom County Flood Control District, and we get money for the salmon, too,” Corey said.

By applying money allocated to solving one environmental concern, it is possible to solve multiple environmental concerns at the same time. This is one thing that the Conservation District excels at, Corey said.

Overall, the problems of watershed and drainage improvement are solvable using a combination of regulation, education, sustainability and hard work. Regulation is a responsibility of the local government and ultimately the voters themselves. Likewise, education and sustainability are being tackled by organizations like the Whatcom Conservation District and the Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association. Work crews with the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office are responsible for the hard work component. §

¹Avery, Michael. “Behavioral and ecological Consideration for Managing Bird Damage to Cultivated Fruit.” US Department of Agriculture Website. 2002. USDA-Animal & Plant Inspection Service, Web. 10 Nov 2009. http://168.68.129.70/wildlife_damage/nwrc/publications/02pubs/aver026.pdf.