Campaign aims to save Puget shoreline

SEATTLE – A $3 million pledge from the Russell Family Foundation has kicked off an $80 million campaign to conserve and restore Puget Sound shoreline, with plans for 10 new parks and natural areas within three years.

“We will leave it up to them to identify the sites. We haven’t picked any place and said, ‘Save that one,’ ” said Nancy McKay, who manages the Gig Harbor-based foundation’s efforts to promote and support environmental sustainability with annual grants.

But organizers expect that will just be the beginning.

The initial $80 million effort is the first phase of what is viewed as a 10-year, multibillion-dollar campaign to recover and restore the 2,100-mile web of tidelands, mud flats, rocky shores and beaches that serve as a nursery for the state’s inland sea.

Combined efforts

The private campaign ties in with state and federal efforts to restore faltering salmon runs and other endangered species, and with Gov. Chris Gregoire’s Puget Sound Partnership, a 16-member council charged with developing a 15-year plan for sound recovery. The first draft is due in June.

The effort is being led by three Seattle-based groups – People for Puget Sound, the Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land – working together as the Alliance for Puget Sound Shorelines.

“Saving the shoreline is necessary to saving the entire sound. Ecologically, this is where the action is,” Kathy Fletcher, executive director of People for Puget Sound, told the News Tribune of Tacoma. The conservancy and the land trust will identify properties eligible for designation as parks or natural areas.

“The ecologic diversity of the sound’s 2,500 miles of shoreline is astounding,” said David Weekes, who directs the Nature Conservancy’s Washington chapter.

‘Ambitious goal’

At least a third of the shoreline has been altered by human development, organizers said. About 25 percent of the original salt marsh habitat remains while thousands of acres of tidelands have been polluted by toxic contaminants.

In recent years, fish and seabird populations have declined in the sound. Shellfish beds have been so tainted that in many places they cannot be safely eaten. The resident orca population is struggling for survival due to contamination, dwindling salmon runs and vessel traffic.

“It’s an ambitious goal, but I believe we will be successful,” said Roger Hoesterey, Seattle-based director of the land trust’s Northwest and Rocky Mountain region.