Manifisto
Here is a vision for WEAN written in 1989
by Steve Erickson.
original draft, 1989, revised 2005
I regret that I am unable to attend this workshop today. Instead, I am at a conference dealing with many of these same issues on a larger scale.
This paper is my attempt to address briefly the announced subject of this panel -- essentially, a complete wetland conservation program for Island County. I consider this from a perspective of being both a “down and dirty” activist and a professional in the field of conservation biology; specifically, the sub-discipline of restoration ecology.
Because of space limitations, this paper is necessarily an overview. Those who would like more detailed information, reading material, or scientific references should feel free to contact me. And I especially urge anyone interested in turning the vision outlined in this paper into reality to join Whidbey Environmental Action Network and help us.
That vision is of an integrated preserve and park system for Whidbey and Camano islands designed using ecological principles and information.
We can’t arbitrarily separate wetlands from the rest of the landscape. In ecological systems, everything is connected to everything else. Some of the critical functions wetlands serve in the larger landscape are to act as conduits for nutrient and energy flows; to act as a stabilizing mechanism by buffering energy fluxes, such as storms and floods; and to function as corridors for the migration and dispersal of plants, animals, and their gene pools.
If we wish to preserve functioning ecosystems with a full array of processes and native species, we must recognize that three of the most common conservation strategies simply don’t work in the long term and are doomed to failure. These (very briefly) are:
1. Conservation based on aesthetics, with biology along for the ride. Grassers Hill on central Whidbey is an example. A floristic “hot spot” of regional significance, the National Park Service holds easements on the hill, but these are purely “scenic.” Formal protection of regionally significant native plant populations is non-existent; these species’ existence on Grassers is threatened by human activities.
2. Conservation of static landscapes. The dynamic aspects of nature, such as plant and community succession, must be taken into account. To maintain old growth forest habitats, younger forest at earlier stages of development must be allowed to mature.
3. Conservation of only outstanding, pristine, or isolated habitat patches. There are many reasons this method won’t work. Perhaps the most obvious is illustrated by the adage “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
So we have to take a landscape level view and base our conservation strategies, tactics, and techniques on biological reality. We must know what is ecologically necessary, so that we can develop a vision to turn into political reality.
Particularly relevant is the theory of island biogeography - basically the lessons that have been learned by studying island ecosystems. This includes both physical islands, such as Whidbey, and habitat islands, such as a wetland or patch of old growth forest that is isolated from similar habitat. Development on Whidbey Island is fragmenting the landscape into a series of disconnected patches.
The most obvious difference between “island” and “continental” ecosystems is that islands have fewer species. Some of the reasons that are relevant to this discussion are:
1. Islands are smaller. As a result, there may be fewer kinds of habitats and niches compared to continental or more extensive systems; that is, less habitat diversity.
2. Because the area of habitat is smaller, not all stages may be represented at a particular time. For example, at a given time, there may only be young forest present. Species that require mature or old growth forest will be locally extinct. Later, even when the forest matures, the species that are dependent on that stage of forest development will not be present to colonize it.
3. Populations of plants and animals may be small. An island population may become locally extinct because of natural fluctuations in the number of organisms, or because of a local catastrophe, such as unusually severe weather or a bulldozer and chain saw. If isolated from other populations, recolonization may be impossible. In that case, the local extinction will become permanent.
Using these and other ecological principles gives us some basic guidelines and criteria for designing an ecological preserve system for Whidbey Island:
1. Provide connectivity throughout the landscape. The functions of wetlands in this regard, as corridors, are obvious. On South Whidbey, they will provide the backbone of the system.
2. Provide enough core patches of sufficient size so all stages and community types are represented and normal disturbances, such as wind and fire, can occur.
3. Buffer those core patches and corridors so they’ll be defensible from invasions of exotic species and degrading climatic influences.
4. Expand the preserve system as necessary to include special elements that are otherwise not represented, such as rare species and isolated communities.
5. Restore degraded areas and functions as necessary. This will require both active, “hands on” restoration (i.e. reintroduction of lost species, creating structural diversity in young tree farms...) and benign neglect, the healing passage of time.
The actual system might look something like this:
1. In every drainage, there should be a core preserve - at least 80 contiguous acres for forest patches. While this is not large enough to provide the habitat found in the interior of forest stands, it should be minimally large enough to provide refuge from disturbance by humans for many sensitive and shy species. On Central Whidbey, several patches of at least 40 acres of recreated and restored native prairie should be developed. These are barely minimal sizes; the bigger, the better.
2. Multiple corridors between the core preserves and between the coast and the inland core preserves should be provided. Where corridors cannot be provided, habitat patches which act as stepping stones for migration and dispersal should be. These corridors and stepping stones should be redundant; the more of them there are, the better.
3. Both the corridors and core preserves should be buffered from human and climatic disturbance. The corridors and buffers must be wide enough to be meaningful. 25 foot “greenbelts” around the periphery of developments are ecologically useless. 100 foot undisturbed buffers on each side of a corridor should be considered the minimum acceptable. Landowners acting in concert can help produce buffers of the necessary width. Secondary, multiple-use buffers with restricted use are also desirable - for example, restrictions on the kinds of forestry allowed.
How big would such a preserve system be? I estimate between 1/5 and 1/3 of the landscape, about 15,000 to 30,000 acres on Whidbey. This also includes the expected secondary, multiple-use buffers. The core preserves and “special” sites should be in public ownership. Corridors and stepping stone patches can be privately owned.
Obviously the system can also serve other functions, such as aquifer recharge, greenbelts separating urban areas, trail systems, and dispersed, low intensity recreation. The system is typically open to public use, except where necessary to protect sensitive species and where private owners are unwilling to allow public access. Willingness to provide public access should not be a criterion for inclusion in the system.
There are three primary legal and political tools to make the system a reality: regulation, voluntary conservation easements, and public purchase and ownership.
1. Regulation. Wildlife is a public resource. Flood and stormwater control and aquifer recharge are necessities for protecting the public health and welfare. These principles are well established in law. The rights inherent in owning property are not absolute and the public has no obligation to guarantee a profit based on land ownership or speculation. Compensation is not required as long as a reasonable economic use is allowed.
The ethical basis for the protection of the ecosystem includes the belief that future generations of humans have rights - we should not bequeath to them an ecosystem from which resources which may prove useful to them have been degraded or destroyed. A current example is the lack of sufficient numbers of wild pacific yew trees for treating cancer, in part due to clearcutting and other “scorched earth” forestry practices of the past 100 years or so.
Many people also believe that wild nature and its components have the right to exist, in and of themselves, independent of any current or future utility to humans.
2. Voluntary conservation easements. These may be donated or bought. Whatcom and Kitsap counties have Open Space Public Benefit Rating Systems(*). This provides a method for the county to give the individual property owner a reduction in their property taxes, in exchange for providing public benefit. Providing public access is not necessarily required. Island County should adopt such a system, with an emphasis on wildlands and ecosystem conservation.
Island County desperately needs a private land trust focused on wildlands and ecosystem preservation, not merely scenery(**). This will also provide the tax exempt and organizational structure for conducting the research needed to design the ecological preserve and park system. Besides conducting research and designing the system, this organization will aggressively recruit landowners into the system. Conservation easements will be tailored to individual landowners’ needs, but be ecologically based. We hope to have Whidbey Wildlands Trust up and running by next winter. Anyone interested in helping with this should contact us.
3. Public ownership. Fee simple purchase of wildlands and restoration sites is the most basic conservation method, along with governmental funding of easements. There are three readily available methods for raising the money necessary for public acquisition: a conservation futures tax, bond issues, and the real estate sales tax.
A conservation futures (property) tax has already been implemented in Island County. Unfortunately, it provides less than $200,000 per year, a grossly inadequate amount considering development pressures operating in Island County and the magnitude of conservation that needs to occur.
Bond issues are essentially a property tax. They have the disadvantage of transferring much of those public funds into the coffers of private financiers, instead of going for the avowed purpose of the bond issue. They are also regressive toward those on fixed incomes. These add up to severe political and operational liabilities.
Though the real estate sales tax failed the first time it ran in Island County, over the long term this is the most promising method for raising substantial funding for conservation. If it runs for a long enough term virtually everyone in the county will contribute. 20 - 30% should be placed in a permanent trust fund to provide the financial resources that will be needed for long term management and maintenance of the system. An aggressive political campaign will be needed to pass this tax, explaining and selling the vision behind it. Statements during the previous, failed campaign that no public land would be purchased were nonsensical. This $50 million program to establish a comprehensive ecological preserve and park system will involve the purchase of a great deal of land by the public. It will form the basis for conservation and recreation in Island County for the next 100 - 500 years - a fitting inheritance for us to leave to the future.
As for the argument that we cannot afford to have so much land off of the tax rolls, we must recognize that undeveloped land does not require the services that developed land does. Coyotes don’t pay taxes, but neither do they require roads, drainage districts, schools, fire departments, police, libraries, or planners processing building permits. The reduction of the tax base is only relevant as compared to the tax outlays required for that land.
If this proposal sounds unrealistic, consider the alternative: small, isolated fragments of nature, becoming less and less ecologically viable, with more and more species going extinct. This is not a realistic vision for conserving nature to leave to our children, not if we want the recovery and preservation of a healthy ecosystem with a full complement of native species, ecological functions, and processes.
“Can we afford to do this?” is not the question we should be asking. The question is, “Can we afford not to?”
(*) Island County now has an Open Space Public Benefit Rating System, but it is a well-kept secret.
(**) Whidbey Camano Land Trust has taken major steps in this direction in the intervening years.