County Is Reluctant Participant In the “Sea to Tree” Race

Wendy Harris is a retired citizen who comments on development, mitigation and environmental impacts.

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”

-John Muir

Whatcom County contains the only large parcel of land remaining within Puget Sound where natural land cover extends from the sea to the upland forest. The Chuckanut Mountain range connects the marine shoreline to national forest, resulting in a wildlife corridor of regional significance, acknowledged at the state level. While the beauty and recreational value of the Chuckanut Mountains is well known, its even greater habitat value is less understood.

There have been numerous efforts by different groups to protect this area from development. Whatcom County has become the latest, albeit unwilling, participant in the race to protect the Chuckanut Mountains from encroaching growth. For Whatcom County, this race is quite literal, and for community residents, the potential prize is quite significant.

Why the County Is in the Race

In January, the Growth Management Hearings Board determined that the county was not in compliance with the Growth Management Act (GMA) because it updated the rural element of the County Comprehensive Plan without adopting measures to protect critical areas, such as the Chuckanut Wildlife Corridor.1 During the appeal process, the county responded to questions of how it protected the Chuckanut Wildlife Corridor with silence. The county was given until July 10, 2012 to adopt measures that address habitat fragmentation and degradation of the corridor.2

The Whatcom County Planning Commission recently completed its recommendations for the County Council. With a majority of planning commissioners philosophically opposed to the Growth Management Act (GMA), the commission tried to do as little as necessary to satisfy the hearings board. It rezoned most county areas within the Chuckanut Wildlife Corridor to five acre lots. This affected zoning in Chuckanut, Lake Samish, South Bay, Cain Lake and Wickersham.3 The planning department also cited the County Critical Area Ordinance (CAO) as evidence of protective measures, although the CAO existed when the hearings board issued its decision.

On June 5, 2011, the County Council introduced the planning commission recommendations, which means that the council can vote on the recommendations at its next meeting (June 19, 2011). Prior to that, on June 12, 2012, the council will discuss this matter in an executive (closed) session.

At the council’s planning committee meeting discussing the recommendations, it was clear that some council members did not understand why wildlife corridors are necessary or how they function. Local citizens need to educate the Whatcom County Council on the importance of protecting the Chuckanut Wildlife Corridor. (I recommend emails and telephone calls.)

Sam Crawford thought it was “suspicious” that Councilmembers were unaware of the Chuckanut Wildlife Corridor. (In a committee meeting several months ago, Crawford stated that the CAO should be amended to get rid of “nuisance species like elk.”) Kathy Kershner agreed that the Corridor was “suspicious,” as well as “scary” because the next requirement could be to make people take down their houses. (This is contrary to County law regarding nonconforming lot size, or state protection of property rights.) She wanted a habitat corridor that protected the human species.

Why The Sea to Tree Race Matters

The Chuckanut Wildlife Corridor must be protected pursuant to mandate of the Growth Management Hearings Board. The GMA requires protection of critical areas, which includes “habitat conservation areas.” This is incorporated into the county’s Critical Area Ordinance, which attempts to “regulate development so that isolated populations of species are not created and habitat degradation and fragmentation are avoided.” (WCC 16.16.700.C.) The corridor was classified as “important local habitat” after its importance was highlighted in a Best Available Science (BAS) analysis conducted for the last CAO update.4

These legal obligations are based on significant public welfare concerns. We need to preserve the Chuckanut Wildlife Corridor because wildlife corridors protect and enhance biodiversity, which is the foundation of healthy eco-systems.5 Healthy ecosystems create benefits and services that have always been taken for granted, but increasingly are being understood as pivotal for human survival.6

Ecosystem benefits include filtering of air and water, decomposition of waste, soil creation and stabilization, improved water storage and availability, buffering and control of storm water and floods, temperature moderation, carbon sequestration, crop pollination, protection of food and pharmaceutical sources, and pest control.7 The EPA is researching links between infectious human diseases and loss of biodiversity.8 Coordinated global efforts to study and understand the significance and the impacts of loss in biodiversity are on-going.9

It has been stated that wildlife corridors hold more promise for the conservation of biodiversity then any other management factor except stabilization of the human population.10 Wildlife corridors promote biodiversity by permitting animals to move between habitats, allowing genetic exchange. This preserves genetic diversity within a species, species diversity within an ecological community and ecological diversity within a region. Isolated animal and plant populations face risk of extinction.11

Additionally, wildlife corridors allow species to move between habitat types and connect land to water. This is important because most wildlife species require more than one type of habitat for survival, as well as access to water. Corridors allow wildlife to flee from fires and other natural disasters, or from the slower changes resulting from global warming, and provide alternative habitat for wildlife communities.

Wildlife corridors are most successful when they connect habitats of minimum size and diversity necessary to support all local species. It follows that larger wildlife corridors, particularly those connected to wildlife preserves, best accommodate these requirements. Studies have confirmed the connection between the length and width of wildlife corridors and its use by wildlife species.12 Larger corridors are particularly important in allowing movement of large, migrating mammals.

The Chuckanut Wildlife Corridor Is the Prize

This makes the Chuckanut Wildlife Corridor of especially high conservation value because it is large, undeveloped and diverse, and it connects marine and fresh water to the vastness of national forest. The Chuckanut Wildlife Corridor also provides linkage to other habitat areas within Whatcom County, and protects the Pacific flyway.

The importance and value of the Chuckanut Wildlife Corridor was confirmed in the County’s CAO Best Available Science review.13 The BAS analysis reflected the Corridor’s “unique diversity” of important habitat types, habitat elements and wildlife species. (Pages 6-15 through 6-19, BAS Review.)

This includes marine shorelines, cliffs, caves, bogs, fens, wetlands, lakes and streams. Moreover, the Chuckanut Wildlife Corridor contains one of the only remaining (relatively) lowland areas with intact forest cover, including Douglas fir, Western Hemlock and Western Cedar.

This, in turn, supports a wide diversity of species, including priority species such as the Townsend big-eared bat, tailed frog and marbled murrelet, as well as band-tailed pigeons, Northern goshawks, bald eagles, osprey (a species of local importance under the CAO), and other raptors. (Page 6-14 and 6-15 of BAS Review, Landscape Focal Area 5).

County Sea to Tree Strategy Will Fail

It is disappointing, therefore, that the five acre zoning proposal is insufficient to prevent habitat fragmentation and degradation. Although the County CAO protects the Chuckanut Wildlife Corridor, it does not prevent residential development in the corridor. Nor does it impose buffers, or comprehensive development standards that protect the function and value of the wildlife corridor.

The zoning recommendation ignores the studies that the hearings board found persuasive and cited in its determination. This included a WDFW study that densities of no greater than one dwelling unit per 20 acre, when augmented by wildlife conservation planning measures, are necessary to protect wildlife species. At densities of one dwelling unit per 2.5 acres, over 70 percent of the native species will be lost.14 The hearings board also cited to the Cascades to Chuckanut Conservation Plan, Conservation Biology Institute, (Jan. 2004), stating, “Human actions that reduce, fragment or degrade natural habitat are ultimately the leading cause of species endangerment.”14

Any development that discourages species mobility, or limits opportunity to nest, rest and forage, regardless of zoning, does not protect the Chuckanut Wildlife Corridor. Five acre zoning is still likely to alter native vegetation, introduce invasive species (bullfrogs, cats, dogs), and degrade water quality and quantity within the corridor. (The harmful effects of human alteration are listed in the BAS Review at Table 6-5. See also Pages 6-14 and 6-15.)15

The CAO regulates development within the corridor on a case by case basis, and makes mitigation requirements a matter of administrative discretion. WCC16.16.730. As a practical matter, it is difficult to protect the corridor under an uncoordinated, piece-meal approach. A “big picture” analysis is needed to determine issues of habitat connectivity, minimum patch sizes and habitat diversity and rarity. Comprehensive planning efforts are needed to protect the corridor’s functional value.

Five acre zoning does not restore connectivity in areas of the corridor that may already be fragmented, nor does it protect intact habitat from development. As a minimum starting point, special development standards are needed for any development that is permitted within the Chuckanut Wildlife Corridor.

The county should restrict construction of obstacles to movement, such as fences and high towers. Limits must be placed on removal of natural land cover and impervious surface. Pets should be prohibited beyond property boundaries. Wetlands should not be filled. Metrics-based buffers are necessary. Restrictions are needed on lighting, noise and roads.16

Perhaps most important of all, the county and the cities need a comprehensive, coordinated wildlife conservation/management plan that creates and protects a functional network of reserves and corridors for habitat protection and biodiversity. But that, I am sure, will be the subject of another column.

Footnotes

1. http://www.co.whatcom.wa.us/pds/plan/long/projects/lamird/pdf/20120109-fdo.pdf. For disclosure purposes, I am a member of two different groups that appealed the County’s Rural Element update to the hearings board.

2. The hearings board determined that the county failed to comply with the Growth Management Act, or that enacted provisions that were invalid, on 24 issues. This article addresses only one of these issues.

3. http://www.co.whatcom.wa.us/pds/plan/long/projects/lamird/pdf/20120529-draftmaps.pdf. This is the proposed map rezone for all zoning changes made pursuant to the rural element update.

4. http://www.co.whatcom.wa.us/pds/naturalresources/criticalareas/pdf/bas_final_20050520.pdf Parametrix Report on BAS Review and Recommendation for Code Review, May, 2005.

5. http://waconnected.org/importance-of-habitat-connectivity. http://www.esa.org/education_diversity/pdfDocs/biodiversity.pdf.

6. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/biodiversity/why-conserve-biodiversity/index.html. This link to England’s Natural History Museum includes video discussion by an environmental economist.

7. http://www.esa.org/education_diversity/pdfDocs/ecosystemservices.pdf.

8. http://www.epa.gov/ncer/biodiversity/background.html.

9. http://www.ipbes.net/ http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2012/06/06/scientists-uncover-evidence-of-impending-tipping-point-for-earth.

10. Keith Hay, Conservation Fund widely cited in numerous articles.

11. http://pcjv.org/docs/Urban%20Wildlife%20Corridors%20Effectiveness.pdf comprehensive and extensive review of science on habitat corridors conducted by Portland Metro government in 2010.

12. Id; Haddad NM: Corridor use predicted from behaviors at habitat boundaries. The American Naturalist 1999, 153:215-227.

13. http://www.co.whatcom.wa.us/pds/naturalresources/criticalareas/pdf/bas_final_20050520.pdf Parametrix Report on BAS Review and Recommendation for Code Review, May, 2005.

14. http://www.co.whatcom.wa.us/pds/plan/long/projects/lamird/pdf/20120109-fdo.pdf. (FOD, Page 41 of 177, citing WDFW, Landscape Planning for Washington’s Wildlife: Managing for Wildlife in Developing Areas, Dec. 2009).

15. http://www.co.whatcom.wa.us/pds/naturalresources/criticalareas/pdf/bas_final_20050520.pdf Parametrix Report on BAS Review and Recommendation for Code Review, May, 2005.

16. http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/publications/papers/wild-corridors.pdf; http://corridordesign.org/dl/docs/corridordesign.org_BMPs_for_Corridors.pdf;