The weekend after the General Election, I went to the Oregon coast. There, with a sister-friend, I stood on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The waves roared toward the beach, toward us. The surf was powerful even though the night was calm and clear.
As we watched, an enormous wave reared up, pulling water from deeps that seemed bottomless. You could hear the wave’s power, feel it in the ground. All the might of nature seemed to charge at us like a stampede of horses. We stood there, holding hands, arms in the air, watching in defiance. I yelled, I am not afraid of you! And then, just as the wave seemed that it would engulf us, it collapsed into a whimper.
Nature has many lessons and that night I was reminded that when we stand together, we are powerful. And sometimes, that loud, noisy rush of forces running towards us is not as powerful as it seems. Together, we have more power than we know. It is time for us to come together and step into that power. This is our responsibility.
Take a deep breath. We’re all still here. We’re still in our bodies. Look around and remember the people you are connected to. Remember that we know how to organize. We’ve been building a movement. We are truth tellers, and we will fight for our collective future.
The outcome of the presidential and congressional races feels catastrophic. But in our state, we continue to lead the climate movement. Our state is an example for the nation. We will continue to show what is possible. We will face any rush toward us together in our collective power.
As a Native woman, I am here despite four centuries of Indigenous Peoples suffering unimaginable loss and oppression. My ancestors persevered, resisted, and endured. Because of their sacrifices, I am here today and can persevere, resist, endure and thrive. And fight.
Remember what we WON on November 5: We defeated an initiative to repeal our state’s capand-invest climate law. We elected a progressive governor, and a commissioner of public lands who has a clear vision for managing our state’s public lands for climate and other benefits, not just timber profits. Down the ballot, we elected progressive state legislators, county commissioners, public utility district officials, and more.
To make all these things happen, we raised funds, organized phone banks, knocked on doors around the state, cured ballots, tabled at festivals and community events, funded environmental champions, supported underserved communities, organized coalitions. We know how to do this.
This issue of our magazine is about perseverance. Few victories come without setbacks. Especially now, we must persevere.
Let’s stand and work together, unflinching and strong, until the forces that oppose us fade like a mighty wave draining into the sand.
Alyssa Macy
(she/her) CEO,
Washington Conservation Action Tribal Citizenship: Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Oregon
Waves break against the shores on the Oregon coast. Photo by Cord Pryse.
Cover:
and Raven Borsey,
winners of
Bullitt Prize, stand at the shore of Lummi Nation Stommish Grounds. Photo by Mallori Pryse.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Washington Conservation Action
Ilays Aden, Co-founder Nour Village/Eat with Muslims
Christina Billingsley, Social Policy and Community Development Advisor
Justin Camarata, Treasurer, Civic Leader and Startup Manager
Sharon Chen, Civic Activist and Engineer
Josh Friedmann, Lawyer, Hillis Clark Martin & Peterson, P.S.
Jovan Johnson Hall, Conservator of wild land and historic buildings, Philanthropist, Hotelier
Kellen Hoard, Student, Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University
Dr. Vernon Damani Johnson, Former Faculty, Department of Political Science, Western Washington University
Ken Lederman, Board Chair, McCullough Hill Leary
Joel Moffett, Director of Environmental and Special Projects, Native Americans in Philanthropy
Paulo Palugod, Senior Associate Attorney, Northwest Office, EarthJustice
Sarah Reyneveld, Managing Assistant Attorney General, Washington State Attorney General’s Office
Paul Tabayoyon, Executive Director, Yakima Chapter, Asian Pacific Islander Coalition
Preeti Shridhar, Deputy Public Affairs Administrator, City of Renton
Margie Van Cleve, former Chemical Engineer
Oskar Zambrano Méndez, Secretary, Founder, Somos Más
CONTRIBUTORS, COLLABORATORS, AND CONSULT
Aida Amirul (Which WA Icon is Most Like You?)
Rein Atteman (Standing Up to Big Oil)
Washington Conservation Action Education Fund
Gabe Aeschliman, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Christina Billingsley, Vice Chair, Senior Program Manager, Environmental Engagement, Port of Seattle
Ginny Broadhurst, Salish Sea Institute, Western Washington University
Karen Cunningham, Senior Program Officer, INATAI Foundation
Yolanda Frazier, Health Equity Director, President of Vancouver NAACP chapter
Josh Friedmann, Lawyer, Hillis Clark Martin & Peterson, P.S.
Hector Hinojosa, Founder, Community Roots Collaborative
Eliseo (EJ) Juárez, Director of Equity and Environmental Justice, Washington State Department of Natural Resources
Ken Lederman, Board Chair, McCullough Hill Leary
Jaime Martin, Executive Director of Governmental Affairs & Special Projects, Snoqualmie Tribe
Rosalyn Minh, Student, Washington State University
Jameson Morrell, Director of Sustainability, PACCAR
Justin Parker, Executive Director, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission
Sarah Reyneveld, Managing Assistant Attorney General, Washington State Attorney General’s Office
Katie Ross, Director, Carbon Reduction Strategy & Market Development, Microsoft
Maverick Ryan, Pyramid Communications and Cowlitz Indian Tribal Council Member
Mel Schutten, Locus Innovations, LLC
Amy Scott, Associate Director, Planned Giving, University of Washington
April Sims, Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO
Caroline Traube, Principal, Director of Zero+ Planning, McKinstry
Oskar Zambrano Méndez, Secretary, Founder, Somos Más
Rachel Baker (Fighting for the Trees, The Long Haul, Climate Smart Wood Economy)
Paul Balle (Why I Support WCA)
Keith Curl-Dove (Standing Up to Big Oil)
Caitlin Krenn (Standing Up to Big Oil)
Alyssa Macy (CEO Letter, Post ELection: What Now?, Building Native Political Power)
Stephanie Masterman (Back to the Land, Building Native Political Power)
Rein Attemann, Puget Sound Senior Campaign Manager
Rachel Baker, Forest Program Director
Toria Baldwin, WCA Ed Fund Administrative Associate
Paul Balle, Donor Relations Director
Lennon Bronsema, Vice President of Campaigns
Katie Byrnes, Toxics and Stormwater Senior Policy Manager
Heidi Cody, Southwest Washington Field Manager
Keith Curl-Dove, Fossil Fuel Campaign Manager
Grace Doleshel, Civic Engagement Organizer
Meryl Ellingson, Annual Giving Manager
Katie Fields, Forests, Fire and Communities Senior Manager
Julie Gonzales-Corbin, Human Resources Director
David Gorton, Vice President of Development
Adri Hennessey, HR & Administrative Manager
Holly Hines, Local Government Affairs Senior Manager
Sonia Hitchcock, Digital Field Manager
Kat Holmes, Field Director
Tony Ivey, Political & Democracy Senior Manager
Kenzie Knapp, Political and Civic Engagement Coordinator
Caitlin Krenn, Climate & Clean Energy Director
Julia Lilly, WCA Administrative Associate
Robinson Low, Habitat Policy Manager
Alyssa Macy, Chief Executive Officer
Stephanie Masterman, Tribal Nations Program Senior Manager
Andrea Matheny, Tribal Nations Program Director
Heather Millar, Content Senior Manager
Tina Montgomery, Business Relations & Events Director
Mariah Morr, Salesforce Admin & Data Senior Manager
Darcy Nonemacher, Government Affairs Director
Megan Ouchida, Donor Engagement Senior Manager
Bryan Pelach, State Forestlands Program Manager
Sean Pender, Vice President of Administration
Adriana Perrusquia, Executive Assistant and Board Liaison
Mallori Pryse, Visual Communications Manager
Zachary Pullin, Communications Director
Mindy Roberts, Puget Sound Program Director
Julian Santos, Climate and Clean Energy Senior Manager
Karina Solorio, Yakima Community Organizer
Joy Stanford, Political & Democracy Director
Zara Stevens, Native Vote Washington Field Director
Ava Stone, Climate Smart Wood Senior Manager
Lauren Tamboer, Foundation Relations Senior Manager
Mariana Turrubiates Garcia, Development Associate
Rico Vinh, Forests and Fish Program Senior Manager
Christina Wong, Vice President of Programs
Halleli Zacher, Events & Outreach Coordinator
WCA staff attend summer 2024 staff retreat at Owen Beach in Tacoma, WA. Photo courtesy WCA.
Reflect. Regroup. Organize.
Written by Alyssa Macy, WCA CEO and Joy Stanford, WCA political and democracy director
We were hoping to write an election response about a future we’ve been imagining for years –our first Black female President. Our first Indian American President. That is not the response we are writing. Instead, we offer an analysis that is equal parts celebration and a reflection on resistance.
We write this as two female leaders in a movement and in a society that, as we’ve just painfully seen, does not easily cede power to women. Alyssa is WCA’s first Native female CEO. Joy is the first Black female political director, not only for WCA but for any statewide environmental nonprofit. With our colleagues, we lead Washington’s most powerful conservation and environmental justice organization.
There’s never been a more important time for our voices and our leadership to help navigate the uncertain future. One lesson from the 2024 election is that we need to really listen to people, all people. Our identity and life experience make us uniquely positioned to do that.
But first, let’s savor what we accomplished this year: To say that the 2024 elections were unprecedented is both overused and accurate. In Washington state, we defeated powerful forces. We made progress on the policy. We told our story in a way that moved voters.
On Earth Day, we launched our most ambitious campaign, also led by an incredible woman named Kat Holmes, WCA’s field director. Our goal: get
50,000 new or infrequent voters to vote in the November General Election. Through event outreach, phone banking, and more, we got 58,900 pledges to vote. This is the kind of audacious organizing it takes to grow environmental majorities in the legislature, and that defeats far-right initiatives like I-2117, which would have repealed our state’s capand-invest carbon law.
WCA lent its electoral organizing and fundraising expertise, honed over nearly six decades, to the NO on I-2117 campaign. We also made significant contributions, of both money and staff time, to this successful fight.
During the Primary Election, Washington Conservation Action and WCA Votes organized, supported, and raised nearly $300,000 to ensure that our endorsed candidate, Dave Upthegrove, made it through the Primary Election for commissioner of public lands. That race was ultimately decided by just 49 votes across the whole state.
Now Upthegrove, who has a detailed vision for modern management of our public state forests, will be the next commissioner to lead the Department of Natural Resources.
That’s just a sampling of our many victories at the state level. See the sidebar for a more comprehensive list of others.
But, of course, at the national level, the outcome of the election stirs up fear, anxiety, and exhaustion.
Too many have risen to power through explicit appeals to racism, misogyny, fascism and antidemocratic ideas.
We ask you to remember that the last time that the federal administration was this opposed to our ideals, we organized, resisted and built a powerful movement. We can do this again. But first, we must get comfortable with our own power.
More than a decade ago, then state Senator-elect Pramila Jayapal asked an audience at a post-election panel, “Raise your hands if you like power!” People shifted uncomfortably, and none raised a hand. She asked again, this time making it clear she wanted people to raise their hands. They did. Jayapal then explained that we all have power, we have more power when we come together, and that our values and our ideals need power to make change.
As women of color, we’re used to being tested. We’re used to seeing our communities tested. We’re used to persevering. And we hold a special power of dreaming about a new reality and organizing to make it happen. Despite everything, we continue to advocate and build towards communities that are resilient, just, safe, and healthy.
We don’t know what the future holds, but we know we have the power to meet it. Join us.
KEY WCA-ENDORSED WINS
84% win rate on our endorsed candidates and ballot initiatives
WCA, WCA Ed fund, and WCA Votes raised nearly $3 million dollars to support candidates and fight far-right initiatives.
Statewide executive:
Bob Ferguson, governor
Danny Heck, lieutenant governor
Dave Upthegrove, commissioner of public lands
Chris Reykdal, superintendent of public instruction
Nick Brown, attorney general
Statewide Initiatives:
WCA endorsed NO on all.
I-2117, would have repealed our carbon law. Defeated.
I-2109, would have repealed the capital gains tax. Defeated.
I-2124, would have allowed opt out of long term care tax. Defeated.
State legislature:
Picked up a House seat in the 26th with Adison Richards,
Picked up a Senate seat in the 17th with Adrian Cortes,
59 of 98 House seats Pro-Environment
30 of 49 Senate seats Pro-Environment
Key county positions:
Ryan Mello, Pierce County executive
Jani Hitchens, Pierce County Council
Wil Fuentes, Clark County Council
Public utility districts:
PUDs key in environmental issues
Phyllis Bernard, District 3 – Clallam
Lauren McCloy – Okanogan PUD District 2
Julieta Altamirano - Crosby, District 2 – Snohomish
Pedro Torres – Franklin County District 3
Key Facts:
Lent Tribal engagement expertise on No on I-2117 campaign
56 events hosted
321 volunteers
73,230 volunteer voter contacts
147,043 voter conversations in Call for Climate Action campaign
WCA and Native Vote WA invested in deep canvass paid calling campaign
Above: (L to R) Alyssa and Joy attend the Daybreak Star Powwow. Photo by Joy Stanford.
Nurturing the next generation of environmental champions
Connection to place, love of nature, the feeling that we can make a difference—these aren’t things that we have at birth. They must be taught, so that these values persevere generation after generation. Here’s how we’re passing on the commitment to protect people and nature:
YESENIA
NAVARETTE HUNTER
Band member “The Hunter Family,” Assistant Professor of History, Heritage University Toppenish, WA
“I developed my relationship to Mother Earth through music. My family came here from Mexico and worked on farms. For a long time, when I thought of the land, I only thought of labor. Then, we started to play old folk music from Veracruz. It’s called ‘son Jarocho.’ It comes from early Mexico, the music of Indigenous peoples, of African peoples, of laborers. It emphasizes being connected intergenerationally, being connected to place and nature, protecting the Earth. The songs are a form of advocacy.
“I realized that I was not connected to the earth in the way that I wanted. We moved from Seattle to the Yakima Valley, I thought, “I’m going to start a garden with my daughter Ellah.” That was so healing. We played son Jarocho as a family. My son ‘A’ still plays with us. A is an environmental studies student at Heritage University. We play one of their songs, Silent Spring, about pollution.”
Above and left: Ellah Hunter. Photos courtesy Yesenia Navarette Hunter.
MALLOREE WEINHEIMER
Founder and forester, Chickadee Forestry Port Townsend, WA
“I practice ecological forest management, which is focused on balancing ecological, social, and economic values in the forest. I focus on using low impact forestry methods and harvests that mimic natural disturbance patterns to support healthier, more resilient forests while also producing lumber. Like local food, let’s use local wood.
“For this work to succeed, we need more living wage jobs that people can feel proud of. I don’t have children, but I do a lot of work to encourage young people, especially women and people of color. I speak to students where I went to college, the University of Washington, and offer high school internships in my community. I hire young people for my forest crews and pay them a decent wage, $25/ hour. I want people to know that businesses can be a force for good, we can change that narrative.”
Top: L to R, Malloree Weinheimer and Jacqueline Veitinger.
DR. VERNON DAMANI JOHNSON
Retired Professor of Political Science, Western Washington University Board member, WCA Bellingham, WA
“I started camping with my parents in the early 1960s, when I was in junior high. It was in the Great Lakes region. My Dad introduced us to the basics. Setting up camp in inclement weather was the most challenging. Tents were not so easy then. You couldn’t just pop them up! It was the 1960s. We were always the only Black family in the campground.
“I married a Northwesterner and was reacquainted with camping in the 1990s. My wife would take small trips with our son and daughter, and we always did one big camping trip as a family every summer. I look back on that hiking and camping as some of the best times with my kids, quality time. At home, Rebecca and I were racial and social justice activists, but we didn’t lecture to the kids. They just saw what we did. They picked things up. My kids are now grown up. But we still hike together, and both of them are socially conscious and contribute to their communities.”
Right, top: Dr. J and his kids camping, Vancouver Island, 1990s.
Right: L to R, Rebecca Johnson, their daughter Elizabeth and Dr. Vernon Damani Johnson, North Cascades.
Photos courtesy Dr. Vernon Damani Johnson.
Right: young local crew planting
Photos courtesy Malloree Weinheimer.
GLICERIO ZURITA PANACHO
Vancouver Community Organizer, OneAmerica Vancouver, WA
“I came to environmental justice through social justice. My wife was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2009. They held her for over two months at the Tacoma Detention Center. That was a terrible experience, but it made our family really close. After she got out, I contacted OneAmerica, where I work now. At first, I was working on immigrant rights, then I got involved in local politics. I got to know people in the Fruit Valley neighborhood of Vancouver. Big companies were proposing coal trains that would go right through
that neighborhood, and people there didn’t know about it. I got involved with Stand Up to Oil, which was fighting those coal trains and the Tesoro Savage oil terminal.
“We did it as a family: door knocking in Fruit Valley, protesting, education events. My son Ernesto spoke at rallies, my daughter Emily carried signs, and my wife testified at public hearings.. I taught them that we have to fight for immigration status. We also have to fight for clean air and clean water.”
Bottom
Oil Terminal Rally Vancouver September 12, 2015.
Photos courtesy Glicerio Zurita Panacho.
Left: Glicerio Zurita and family at public hearing.
Bottom left: Campaigning with Ty Stober, candidate for Vancouver City Council in Clark Co. Glicerio Zurita second from left, with his arm around his daughter, Emily Zurita. 2015. Stober is now co-chair of the National League of Cities.
right:
OSKAR ZAMBRANO MÉNDEZ
Somos Más Community Strategies
Washington | California | Mexico
WCA board member
“I was brought to the United States when I was two, but my deep connection to nature has always been a part of who I am. Growing up, my parents often shared stories about the beautiful natural landscapes near our hometown of Puebla, about 60 miles east of Mexico City. Our ancestors taught us the importance of stewarding and caring for the land, and leaving it better than we found it.
“Now that I have children, those lessons resonate even more profoundly. My daughter and son, who are three and one, have an innate love for water in nature. They’re true water babies. I cherish watching their sense of wonder as they explore beaches, rivers and waterfalls. This past summer, we took a memorable trip along the whole coast of Baja California, where they saw an abundance of ocean wildlife and marveled at both the Gulf and the Pacific Ocean. When we’re not enjoying water activities, we love going on nature walks. We teach our children the names of different fauna and flora. Our hope is that these experiences will instill in them a deep appreciation and respect for nature.”
Left: Zambranos at Balandra Beach, La Paz, Mexico Below: Xavi enjoying the beach waves. Bottom: Oskar and daughter Ximena on a nature walk.
Photos courtesy Oskar Zambrano Méndez.
Written by Heather Millar (she/her), WCA Content Senior Manager
Perseverance. As we process the results of the 2024 election, it’s good to remember that life has always been difficult. Power has never conceded anything willingly. Standing up for justice and inclusion has too often meant fighting for those things. Little wonder then that so many, many cultures encourage the ability to keep going despite obstacles, to get back on the horse, to keep striving.
The Chinese tell a story dating to at least 400 BCE about a man in his 90s who sets out to move a mountain, one shovel at a time. For centuries, the ancient Greeks sang the song of Odysseus, who overcomes seemingly endless challenges to make his way home. The Lummi Nation tells the tale of Raven, who comes close to death, not once but twice, and yet never gives up trying to find food for his people. Raven wins the respect of Salmon Woman who gives her children as a gift to the Lummi, the Lhaq'temish, the original people of Washington’s northernmost coast and southern British Columbia.
In the United States, the dominant culture has enthusiastically embraced the idea of perseverance. It’s a concept difficult to avoid in American life, so easy to make compatible with competition and capitalism. Over the centuries, it’s become woven into our secular, national faith, with other often unexamined themes like flags and fireworks, freedom and opportunity. We name a Mars rover Perseverance. We tack the word onto everything from therapy practices and personal branding schemes to adventure books and boats to flooring and basketball shorts and silver mines. You’ve probably been aware of the idea since playground days when a parent told you to dust yourself off and get up after a fall; or, if you’re athletic, since a coach told you to “push through the pain;” or, since adolescence, when a friend encouraged you to put that bad breakup behind you and come out to see your friends.
In environmental, social justice and political work, perseverance is a vital part of the toolbox. Many of the victories that we celebrate at Washington Conservation Action have come only after a decade, or several decades, of pushing, of failing and starting again, of not giving up. These include the Timber Fish Wildlife Agreement, the blocking of fossil fuel infrastructure in Vancouver, Whatcom County, and Tacoma; the Climate Commitment Act, and many, many others.
Perseverance remains a powerful ideal whether you lose, or whether you win.
If you lose, then try, try again. That’s the stuff of a thousand inspirational business posters and self-improvement books and blogs. That’s the Native peoples of North America working out how to domesticate wild teosinte grass into corn until the ears
Activists gather in Tacoma for the global climate strike in 2019. Photo courtesy WCA.
became large and appetizing, and then learning to hybridize it into many subspecies, a process that took centuries. That’s 20th century motivational speaker Dale Carnegie exhorting his followers, “Discouragement and failure are two of the surest steppingstones to success.” That’s inventor Thomas Edison failing again and again to create an incandescent light bulb, and then, when he succeeded, saying, “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have just successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.” Edison’s exact words have been debated, but he returned to this essential idea again and again. So have thousands of others.
“We need to channel the spirit of scholar, writer and activist Angela Davis who famously said, 'You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.'”
And if you win, there is always more work to do, another goal to set. We are not so far along the road to create a world where both people and nature thrive that we can rest after each victory. If we create and defend a carbon pricing law, that’s not the end point. The goal is a clean, carbon-free way of living and meeting our needs. If we get municipalities to more thoroughly treat their sewage before releasing it into Puget Sound, then there still will be orca and kelp forests to protect, underwater noise pollution to address, salmon streams to be released from the bondage of dams. If we get the state to stop logging mature stands of trees, there are still myriad ways we could better manage our forestlands.
We need to channel the spirit of scholar, writer and activist Angela Davis who famously said, “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”
So, we press on.
But as we do, it makes sense to wrestle with the complexity of perseverance, its power and its inspiration, but also its potential for toxicity. How do we keep it from being a slogan, something easily invoked, but not thoughtfully considered?
In popular culture, our nation’s tendency to “Keep on truckin’” is seen as an unalloyed good, the spirit of Conestoga wagons on the Oregon Trail, or Rosie the Riveter building tanks and planes and helping
the war effort in World War II, or the diligent student’s Ivy League college acceptance letter. Yet these tropes gloss over the Native peoples whose homelands were overwhelmed by those Conestoga wagons, or the millions killed in a world war kindled by colonialism and extractive empire, or the myriad social and economic advantages so often required to get accepted to a highly selective university.
We need to be aware that perseverance often gets used by those who are already advantaged to congratulate themselves on their determination and worthiness. It can be used to minimize the challenges of so many sectors of our society that remain unheard and unseen.
Try being an unhoused person begging during a rainy, winter day. You might be surprised what hard work that is, and how the rewards pale in comparison to those of a professional working the same hours in a cozy office. Or try rebuilding your life after getting out of incarceration, with barriers to work, to housing, to food assistance, perhaps with debt accrued while incarcerated and not much of a support network. Persevering in the face of all that would daunt more privileged people.
Beauty of Perseverance
And yet, there is also stunning beauty and wonder in perseverance. Nature is full of it. The Colorado River meanders through the Arizona desert for hundreds of millions of years and carves the Grand Canyon. Despite poor soils and famously harsh weather, a Great Basin bristlecone pine lives on for nearly 5,000 years in California’s White Mountains.
The coelacanth, a primitive fish that lies developmentally somewhere between cartilaginous sharks and rays and more advanced bony fish, hides out in deep water canyons in Indonesia and off the east coast of Africa. Thought to have gone extinct some 66 million years ago when the dinosaurs tapped out, the coelacanth persisted until a live specimen was found in 1938. Two species live on today.
Desert plants thrive despite all odds, with few nutrients and little water. Drought-resistant senna may grow one to six feet tall, but its seed pods explode with such force that they throw seeds as far as 16 feet, increasing the odds that the species will live on and making it an invasive weed in more congenial climates.
When nature finds a solution or an approach that works, that tends to persevere, from age to age and from organism to organism, from tiny plankton to plants to vertebrate animals. Things like nerves and eyes, nature just uses them again and again. You have receptors in your brain that are sensitive
to glutamate, a neurotransmitter. A plant uses the exact same glutamate receptors to sense its environment, to locate water and react to predators.
The skeletal structure of limbs is remarkably consistent across many animals. Look at your arm: It consists of a heavy upper bone, the humerus, connected to two small bones, the radius and ulna, which allow your lower arm to rotate. Then there are some blobs, your wrist, connected to some digits, your fingers.
A lizard’s leg has the same arrangement. A bird’s wing has the same structure, with a smaller humerus and fewer and longer digits. A bat has the same structure, with really, really long digits across which stretch skin to form its wings. Seals and humpback whales have foreshortened humerus bones, and their digits support flippers. Want to make a horse? Elongate the middle fingers and toes, reduce and lose the outer ones. A frog? Elongate all the bones of the leg. It’s all the same essential blueprint persevering, with tweaks.
No Choice but to Press On
So, you might say that perseverance forms part of the essence of living, not least because it encourages survival. In many instances, there is little choice involved.
Think of how it must have been for a member of a Pacific Northwest Tribe in the 1800s. At the beginning of the century, you were living in your ancestral homeland as your people had done for thousands of years. Then, within the space of decades, thousands of newcomers arrive with different technologies and little respect for you, your traditions, or your lands. You’re forced, at the point of a gun or even more sinister by disease, to sign treaties that cede most of your lands. The rights you’ve reserved in those treaties, to hunt, fish, and gather in those places, is ignored. What do you do? You persevere. You keep trying. You survive until you can begin to rebuild your livelihood and culture. Because it is your only choice.
Or, at a personal level: Who among us has not endured a rough patch when life seemed to be coming apart at the seams? A relationship breakup? A financial disaster? An accident? A family member or loved one in trouble? A toxic job? Or maybe all of those, all at once? Most of us persevere through these things. We put one foot in front of the other, we put our heads down until the storm passes and gradually, the path gets more level, more congenial.
You could say the same of a hummingbird parent, leaving the nest 200 times a day, every 20 minutes, from dawn to dark, to feed its chicks. Really, that’s
how it feels for most any new parent. Or how about emperor penguins persisting through the Antarctic winter? Or a million wildebeests braving crocodile-filled rivers, as they migrate annually through Kenya and Tanzania following the rains and fresh grass? Or salmon fighting their way back to the place where they spawned years before? Or a female octopus, dubbed “Octomom” by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute team who tracked her? She tended her clutch of 160 eggs for nearly five years, not eating or moving, fending off aggressive crabs and other predators until her babies hatched.
Persevering together
Some of the most powerful examples of perseverance involve groups. An individual migrating monarch butterfly must dig into reserves of strength to survive the journey, to combat cold. It may not make it. But nature puts that individual into a group of travelling millions. The group protects and provides momentum. One individual butterfly may die, but the species perseveres. This is true of bison or cattle who form clusters facing head in, with the youngest and weakest in the middle, during blizzards. In that way, the group perseveres. Army ants in the tropical forests of Panama form “living
bridges,” clinging one to the other, so that their comrades can scramble over their bodies and reach the collective goal that helps the colony survive. The beaver who once dominated the river landscapes of the Methow Valley, and most other river valleys on this continent, cannot build a dam alone but must do it as a family group.
People also multiply the force of perseverance when they come together: Communities demand economic and environmental justice, insisting that the weight of oppression and pollution that our current systems create should not always fall on the shoulders of the same people. Indigenous peoples come together to fight for their sovereignty and the rights guaranteed in treaties too long ignored. Young people create a global movement to demand the climate action necessary if humanity is to persevere and thrive.
In human history, in natural history, fate can be fickle, dealing out progress and setbacks with no discernable rhyme or reason. No matter which circumstance we face, the important thing is to keep going, keep striving, keep pushing for a world in which people and nature are not at odds, but one system, persevering.
“People also multiply the force of perseverance when they come together: Communities demand economic and environmental justice, insisting that the weight of oppression and pollution that our current systems create should not always fall on the shoulders of the same people.”
A beaver family on the bank of a river. Photo by UbjsP, Adobe Standard License.
Decade after decade, Marcy Golde just keeps showing up
Marcy Golde meets me in the lobby of her downtown retirement community looking like a poster model to illustrate the local quip that “everyone in Seattle dresses like they’re ever ready for an impromptu hike.” She sports quick-dry, zipaway trail paints, plaid nylon hiking shirt, boots. With a warm smile, a firm, businesslike handshake and a brisk step, she leads me to the elevator, then to her apartment, then to her office. You’d never guess she’s 90.
Neat stacks of documents lie in a row on a long, built-in oak worktable by the window. “I wasn’t sure how much detail you would want,” Golde says. “These are just some of the most important things.
“I’m really thrilled right now about a lawsuit brought by the Olympic Forest Coalition that we just settled. We invoked the Endangered Species Act (ESA). We held that the federal Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Department of Natural Resources were violating the terms of the ESA. With the settlement, the agencies must complete four management plans by 2025 or 2026. It's as much as if we’d won in court!”
Golde has been fighting these battles for more than five decades. With time, expertise and consistent, generous donations, she has supported Washington Conservation Action and its predecessor, Washington Environmental Council, from the very beginning days in the late 1960s. She chaired WEC’s Forest Practices Committee from 1978 to 1986 and has helped fund our annual DNR report card for the last nine years.
The list of victories that Golde has helped bring about is long. Those listed in the box on the next
page are just a sampling, most of which involve WCA work. She works with many organizations that seek to protect forests and to push for science-based, sustainable management of working forests.
Golde came to the Pacific Northwest in 1960 as a young, married woman with her late husband, Hellmut, whom she’d met as an undergrad at Stanford. Hellmut had helped to develop Pascal, a successful programming language still used today, and was offered a position in the brand-new electrical engineering department at the University of Washington. He went on to serve as chairman of the department, and to teach both Bill Gates and Paul Allen, famously scolding them for stealing computer time and for borrowing equipment without asking.
A few years after arriving, the couple bought a vacation property near Kalaloch on the Olympic Peninsula. Golde grew to love the place and started to get interested in forestry. She joined WEC. Then, in 1968, she got an invitation from Marian Meachem, who was active in forest issues at WEC. Would she like to take a 3-day trip to the peninsula, to learn about forestry?
“On that trip, I was just shocked by the way logging was done in those days,” Golde remembers. “Clearcutting old growth forest, of course. But it was what they left behind, the waste, not making the slightest effort to ensure that anything would come back, just leaving devastation behind. I felt anger, a deep, deep anger.”
After that, Golde started to fight for the trees. She did not take no for an answer. She did not give up. She learned to help gather evidence, to file lawsuits, to generate publicity, to work with the media.
Often, Golde and her colleagues were the only women in the room. She had to put up with being underestimated, disrespected, told she was a Communist, being forced to stand at the back of the room while everyone else sat, public officials who would insist on addressing her only by her first
“I simply accept that the constant fight is the way the world works. The greed of the species…If you want to move what they do, you have to fight for it.”
name, even in a formal hearing, something considered very rude in the early 1970s.
“I remember a timber industry executive physically blocking the door to a meeting room, saying, ‘You can’t come in.’ I said, ‘It’s a public meeting, you have to let us in because of the Public Disclosure Act of 1971.’” Golde says. “Another time, I was walking out of a DNR meeting with a Weyerhaeuser executive. He said, ‘That’s nice. You’re done now.’ I said, ‘Oh no. I’ll see you next month.’ I guess that’s my strength, I just keep showing up.”
When the negotiations for the Timber Fish and Wildlife (TFW) Agreement began in the 1980s, the timber industry representatives at first said that WEC and National Audubon Society would not be involved, would not sit at the table, would not be in the room.
“I wasn’t taking that,” Golde says. “I said, ‘You can either take us at the table, or we’ll head for the hills and be the guerrillas. Take it either way.’ Then some of the Tribes we had been working with said that if we weren’t at the table, they wouldn’t be either. Not long after that, we were invited to have a place at that table.”
Years of negotiations around that table resulted in the TFW, which brought together diverse groups that had been at odds for decades, provided a framework for rewriting Forest Practices Regulations, instituting improvements such as leaving forested buffers along salmon streams.
“It’s a body of work,” Golde reflects. “I guess it makes a difference that I’ve been involved, primarily because I just came back the next month, and then the month after that. They had to listen, not that they always did what I wanted, but they did have to listen. I simply accept that the constant fight is the way this world works. The greed of the species…If you want to move what they do, you have to fight for it.”
Wins Helped by Marcy Golde
1978-81
South Whidbey State Park, Established that logging on state and private lands was subject to environmental review under the State Environmental Policy Act and added 300 acres of old growth to the park through the “Classic U” case. Formed the legal basis for all later efforts to increase environmental protection from logging. Forced the state to write management plans for all state-managed timber lands.
1984
State parks logging Deception Pass old growth. WEC, with Mountaineers and Sierra Club, helped pass a bill to stop logging for profit in state parks.
1982-85
Helped develop a Forest Management Plan for the 13,500 acres that stopped wholesale suburban development of the forest on Tiger Mountain.
1985-1998
Reformed and improved Forest Practices including requiring first stream buffers on private forest lands, added environmental community and Tribes to active review of state and private logging. Led to additional protection to many, many places, such as Boise Spray I & II, South Nemah, Lilliwaup Swamp, Arleco Creek, Noisy Creek, Devil’s Lake.
1997
State Trust Lands Habitat Conservation Plan.
2016-2024
Worked on negotiating a new federal Biological Opinion (B.O.) controlling the forest management on more than 1 million acres of state-owned forest lands on the westside.
Photo courtesy Marcy
Golde.
“Auntie” Julie Johnson still going strong after a half century of work
Julie Johnson, 82, has worked for nearly six decades to build political power for Native people in Washington state. The list of what she has done is long enough that if just listed here, it would fill all the space we have for this story: funds raised, meetings and conferences organized, projects incubated, candidates supported, awards and honors received. People in political circles, people in Tribal circles, revere her as a courageous leader, a mentor, a connector, a wise strategist. But if you do an Internet search on her, you may not find much.
Partially, that’s because Johnson doesn’t give many interviews. Experience has taught her to be wary of being used by non-Indian institutions. Partially, it’s a cultural thing. She says she was raised not to brag about what she’s done or accomplished.
Historic Investment in Native Vote
One of the latest items on her long resume is that Johnson in January 2024 became advisory committee chair of Native Vote Washington (NVW), an organization which she helped to found. This non-partisan entity to encourage Native political education and participation began in 2008 as
a Native-led collaborative and is now a permanent program of Washington Conservation Action. In 2024, NVW invested $1.2 million in voter registration and engagement efforts amongst Indigenous peoples in Washington, the greatest investment of this kind to date, an historic milestone.
“Throughout my life, I’ve worked to get my people to get involved,” Johnson says. “Non-Native people have been making decisions for us for years. We need to be the ones making decisions for ourselves. We need to be at every table as policy makers.”
Johnson has helped to make that happen. In 2008, when NVW began, just one Indigenous person served at the state Senate level. Today, there is one Indigenous state senator, two state representatives, and 11 other Indigenous public officials at the city council level or higher. In 2024, for the first time ever, five Native candidates ran for statewide office.
“Julie has been a tireless advocate for Native peoples,” says Alyssa Macy, WCA’s CEO. “The Native vote is crucial, with the potential to make a big impact in Washington, and in swing states like Arizona and Nevada.”
by
Photo
Michael Montoya.
“Our Native people need to be in the room. They need to be on the committees making the decisions that affect them, at all levels.”
Raised on Boarding School Stories
Johnson says that her passion for amplifying Native voices and Native power probably goes back to childhood. Her mother, the daughter of a Lummi Kwina Chief, raised her on stories of what it was like to be sent to boarding school, the system of federally-run schools that forced Native families to enroll their children in schools focused on eradicating their heritage and their culture.
“My mother would tell us bedtime stories about her experiences at boarding school,” Johnson says. “She was sent to a federal school on the Tulalip reservation, and all students were prohibited from speaking Tribal languages, their first language. She did speak Lummi to her cousin and her cousin got caught. The teacher lined up 26 girls and each student had to hit my mother’s cousin with a belt. My mom, as the 26th girl in the line, took the belt and hit the teacher as hard as she could. My mother was kicked out of the school.
“My mother also was forced to work in the boarding school infirmary. Lots of kids were getting sick, so she missed a lot of classes. There was so much to do. She studied on her own. The teachers weren’t going to let her take the end-of-year exams because she’d missed so many classes. She insisted on taking the exam, and she passed. Telling us those stories, my mother was teaching us to stand up for ourselves, to not give up.”
Move from Lummi to Makah
When Johnson was still in elementary school, her family’s house on the Lummi reservation burned down and they lost everything. Her father got a job logging on the Olympic peninsula, and the family moved to the Makah reservation at Neah Bay, with nothing. They ended up staying because the Makah reservation was one of the few places that had a state school. Johnson’s mother did not want to send her five children away to boarding school. Johnson ended up meeting her late husband at Neah Bay and has spent most of her life there.
Early in her adult life, Johnson spent time in Seattle working for the Seattle Indian Center and volunteering for the American Indian Woman Service League. Then she served as a planning
director for the Elwha Tribe, and as a grant writer and intergovernmental relations coordinator for the Makah Tribe. Gradually, as she navigated both Native and non-Native spaces, she came to be convinced that Native people needed to get elected to political office. And to do that, she realized, they needed to support each other because no one else was going to do that.
“To give you an example, when the Elwha first decided that they wanted to get rid of the dams, they didn’t have money to hire lobbyists. They had to do it themselves,” Johnson says. “I was working there then. We had to figure out: How do you get people to listen? How do you get an appointment with a U.S. senator?
Study of Non-Indian Politics
“That’s when I started to study things: When is the senator’s office not busy? How do you help them figure out where they might get the money for the project you’re proposing? How do you know if they’re just pretending to pay attention? What is their body language? For instance, I learned that if an aide had to pick up a pen, that meant you hadn’t answered all their questions in your position paper.”
In the late 1990s, building on experiences like these, she started to organize a national gathering of Indian women, held during the annual National Congress of American Indians in Washington, D.C. It began as a coffee, and eventually evolved into an annual “Supporting Each Other” Honor Lunch that highlights one nationally known Native woman, and one Native woman who is just starting out in local office. The group invites members of Congress and others to speak at the lunch.
“As we got involved in supporting each other, we started to support Native people running for office. I met Deb Haaland, now the Secretary of the Interior, at a meeting before she ever ran for office. She was thinking of running for an office in the New Mexico State Democratic party. She ran and won. Then she ran for Congress.
“So I decided to make a study of how non-Natives do their politics. I started watching people. And our people started getting elected. Claudia Kaufman, who’s Nez Perce and was in my youth program when
I worked at the Seattle Indian Center, ran for state Senate and won. Debra Juarez, Blackfeet, got elected to the Seattle City Council.”
Johnson herself decided to run for committee woman in the Clallam County Democratic Party. That meant she would cast one of two votes from Clallam County in state party meetings. Within a few years, she had been chosen to be a delegate to the 2008 National Democratic Convention in Denver. She became chair of the Native American Caucus for the Washington Democratic Party. Johnson was recently elected to cast one of 12 Votes for Washington state in the electoral college as a federal elector for the 6th Congressional District.
Bridging Two Worlds
Even as she became known in both Native and non-Native politics, Johnson says that it was not always a comfortable place to be. She recalls how nervous she was when she showed up to that first Clallam County Democratic Party meeting, remembering the times when her family had not been allowed into certain restaurants, or when her husband, who had a darker complexion, would have storekeepers decline to accept his checks.
The differences between the two worlds reveal themselves both in minutiae and in profound philosophical ways, she says. Native groups tend to not use the word “caucus,” preferring the simpler “meeting.” But she also thinks that Native politicians sometimes have trouble promoting themselves. “It’s not part of our culture to say, ‘I know this. I’m important because of this.’ So, we have to learn to promote our people. We have to learn how to win.”
To help Natives indirectly draw attention to their accomplishments, Johnson compiles a list of Tribal-related meetings and events to share both with Tribal leaders and non-Indians. “It highlights the outstanding services that Natives are providing at the local, state, regional and national level,” she explains. Encouraging Native Involvement
The other key, Johnson says, is getting more and more Native people involved to support those who run for office because Native candidates don’t usually have non-Native consultants and other support staff to work for them. She remembers organizing a fundraiser with an Olympic Peninsula Tribe. They raised $52,000 with two salmon bakes, with what they thought was an understanding that the Tribe would have some say about where the money went. But the powers that be took the money and never asked for any Tribal input, she says.
“Again, we need to be setting the polices, program goals, activities, who is hired, timelines, budgets, reporting/evaluations and how we as Native people promote what we have accomplished. Our Native people need to be in the room. They need to be on
the committees making the decisions that affect them, at all levels.”
Johnson has learned to be persistent and to use honey more than vinegar. When she heard recently that some Tribal liaisons in state departments were being pulled into work that had nothing to do with Tribes, her first reaction was dismay and irritation. But then, she decided to invite all the liaisons to a meeting of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians. “We’re letting them know that we know that they’re supposed to be working with us. And our Tribes want to work with them,” Johnson explains. “But we’re not attacking. An individual invitation was e-mailed to each of the 75 Liaisons. We’re inviting them in to
attend our Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indian conferences and help them connect with the Tribes.”
The effort never ends, Johnson says. “I’m gentle with my people when I invite them into the political process,” Johnson explains. “You’re stepping into a different world. The hardest part is to let our people know that they can be involved. They can be part of making the decisions.”
Recently, she says, she heard that Grays Harbor County was setting priorities for the county but that the local Tribes weren’t involved. “I called up people and told them that they needed to get involved in that process,” she says. “I’m old enough that I can get away with that sort of thing.”
And despite the bumpy and polarized politics that have dominated the last eight years, Johnson says she feels hopeful for the future.
“We have Deb Haaland at Interior; Kamala Harris came to our supporting lunch a few years ago. She talked about Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women (MMIW). She was genuine. It wasn’t transactional. Both our senators here in Washington State and many around the country have attended and helped to honor our Native Women Leaders. We’re so grateful that they have taken the time to attend over the past 27 years. The change comes slowly, but it is coming.”
Johnson at a Native Vote Washington gathering honoring her in 2023, with WCA Board Member Joel Moffett (L, Suquamish/Nez Perce), director of environmental and special projects for Native Americans in Philanthropy, and Port of Olympia Commissioner Maggie Sanders (R, Makah). Photo by Michael Montoya.
Small landowner takes first steps
Richard Hartung grew up in Seattle, and his father, an avid gardener, got him interested in conservation at a young age. One day, in about 2005, Richard called his father to say that he’d heard that Weyerhaeuser was selling off forestland in 20-acre parcels. Richard, who divides his year between Seattle and Singapore, was out of the country and asked his Dad to go down and take a look.
His Dad called back in a few days. “It’s a really nice area,” he said. “About five miles from Eatonville on the way to Mt. Rainer. How about this? I’ll get one and you get one.” So, they did.
People who bought these lots used them for all sorts of things: homes, vacation getaways, farms. But Richard and his dad decided that they just wanted to let the trees grow.
“Our goal was to have a healthier forest that will be there for the next 100 or 200 years,” Richard explains. “Our focus was forest health and biodiversity.”
When his father died in 2017, Richard took over both parcels. He thinned the trees about four years ago but thinks that maybe that they were overthinned. He faced other challenges: blackberries taking over some areas, and waterlogging was killing some of the fir trees Weyerhaeuser had planted.
Richard started listening to webinars presented by the Northwest Natural Resources Group (NNRG) in Seattle, and he decided that he probably needed to develop a forest management plan. Although he missed the application deadline in 2023, he applied to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs and in July was waiting to hear on a more recent application when he got a message from NNRG. “Please call us.” He called and learned that a related grant program in Pierce County is managed by Washington Conservation Action (WCA).
Richard became one of the first small forest landowners to sign up with the USDA Climate Smart Wood project through WCA. WCA is managing this 5-year, federally funded project to build a sustainable wood economy in Pierce County. We’ll be working with landowners like Richard, Tribes, community forests, mills and the logging industry to promote forest management that helps both people and nature.
Richard says the USDA grant will help him develop a forest management plan for his land. “I’ll have a more structured plan to preserve the forest, make it healthier,” Richard says. “And once I have that plan, there’s the possibility of follow-on grants to execute parts of that plan. It’s win-win.”
For more information about the USDA Climate Smart Wood project in Pierce County, use QR code on this page.
Above and top: Two 20-acre parcels first to be included in new project. Photos by Richard Hartung.
Action, Inclusiveness, Impact, Justice
Longtime WCA supporter Ellen Ferguson says she is an unapologetic tree hugger.
“I grew up in Washington, immersed in nature, out on the Olympic Peninsula, in the mountains, hiking, fly fishing. We are so fortunate to live in such an incredible state,” she says. “I came of age in the late ‘60s. I remember the first Earth Day perfectly well. Caring for the Earth, social justice and civil rights, that’s my value set. I’m drawn to people and organizations that share those values and that’s why I support Washington Conservation Action (WCA).”
Ferguson has spent her entire professional career working at University of Washington’s Burke Museum Natural History and Culture. She says she loves being surrounded by scientists, immersed in the ecology and the culture of the Pacific Northwest. She says she felt there was a real synergy between her professional work and WCA.
“I did a little research before I decided that my little family foundation would support Washington Environmental Council (WCA’s predecessor). WCA seems like the United Way for the environment. It brings together and supports different organizations. Its advocacy in Olympia is really important. I felt that investing in WCA would have a wide impact on both people and nature.”
Ferguson says she fully supported the name change in 2023, when Washington Environmental Council and Washington Conservation Voters came together under one brand, Washington Conservation Action.
“I feel like the name now embodies the way the organization has evolved over time. It has a new, more action-oriented feel,” Ferguson says. “I’m super excited by CEO Alyssa Macy, the staff team she has built, the diversity she has nurtured in the staff and the board, the way WCA is lifting up underrepresented communities and voices, doing the work that needs to be done to protect both people and the environment, working with Tribes.
“I love the work WCA is doing with Native Vote Washington. We need more representation of Native people at all levels of government. For all these reasons, I’m committed to my support for WCA.”
If you want to donate by mail, use the remit envelope in this issue of Convene and send it back to us! Or use the QR code at right. We thank you for your support.
Photo courtesy Ellen Ferguson.
What happens after you flush? In larger cities and towns, your sewage is collected and treated by sewage treatment plants. You usually can’t see this happen. But for anyone who has ever experienced a toilet overflow: Wouldn’t you want to ensure that what you’ve flushed is fully treated before it’s pumped into the Salish Sea, home to iconic orca and salmon and Dungeness crab, the traditional highway and lifeblood of Native peoples around this region, a global treasure that we all enjoy?
Washington has a reputation for leading on environmental action. But when it comes to properly treating sewage, we largely have fallen behind the rest of the country. WCA’s People for Puget Sound program has been pushing for better treatment of sewage for decades. This fight requires constant perseverance.
Nationwide, sewage treatment plants remove solid waste, the stuff that might float, or settle to the bottom. Most treatment plants also add a second level of treatment: They use biological agents to further reduce pollution in sewage before it discharges.
Over the last 30 years or so there’s been a growing realization that sewage needs a third layer of processing. It needs to be treated for “nutrients,” like nitrogen and phosphorus which make plants grow. Advanced treatment, such as physical, chemical, biological, or other methods, converts nitrogen that can react with the environment into a form that does not - reducing nitrogen pollution.
Many of the 58 sewage treatment plants around the Salish Sea are using technology that is 50 years old. So, not surprisingly, nearly all treated human waste discharged to Puget Sound still contains pollution, especially nitrogen. This is like pouring buckets of fertilizer onto your garden. Once it gets into the aquatic ecosystem, this excess nitrogen supercharges algae blooms that then reduce the amount of available oxygen in the water. When
oxygen levels get too low, sea life suffers. A 2021 study estimated that as much as 97% of coastal nitrogen pollution comes from sewage pollution.
Sewage pollution also worsens ocean acidification, already set in motion by climate change. Ocean acidification makes it difficult for creatures like clams and crab to form shells, bleaches corals, impairs the growth and reproduction of sea life, and disrupts food webs. Over a decade ago, the state’s Ocean Acidification Blue Ribbon Panel identified reducing local nitrogen and carbon pollution from sewage discharges to Puget Sound as a key step in addressing this threat.
There have been bright spots: The Lacey, Olympia, Lacey, Tumwater, and Thurston County (or LOTT) plant installed modern technology in the 1990s. In the 2000s, Spokane County upgraded and the Squaxin Island Tribe installed a state-of-the-art plant to highly treat sewage from its Little Creek Casino. Pierce County’s Chambers Creek Plant started using equipment in 2022 that reduces nitrogen from sewage.
But two of the biggest polluters, King County and the City of Tacoma, have stubbornly resisted making these upgrades.
“King County and Tacoma, the two largest dischargers, had access to the same information as Pierce County, yet Pierce County planned ahead with the Chambers Creek plant in the early 2000s. They tried to convince people that somehow their sewage wasn’t a problem for downstream communities,” says Mindy Roberts, WCA’s Puget Sound program director.
This runs counter to what’s going on nationally: In 2010, in response to an Environmental Protection Agency rule to limit the nutrient pollution in Chesapeake Bay, half a dozen states in the bay’s watershed, including Maryland and Virginia, and nearly 500 wastewater plants pulled together. By 2015, they
Left: Aerial view over Tacoma wastewater treatment plant. Photo by city of Tacoma.
had reduced nitrogen pollution in the Chesapeake by 57% and reduced phosphorus pollution by 75%, thus meeting 2025 goals a decade early.
In Washington, D.C., authorities have slashed nitrogen pollution in sewage by 70%. In 2023, the regional authority that governs San Francisco Bay mandated that wastewater nitrogen be reduced by 40%. Several design plans are underway. Similar efforts are progressing in Los Angeles and in New York’s Long Island Sound. Even inland areas like Kansas, Montana, Wisconsin and Kentucky are making upgrades to remove nutrient pollution from wastewater, according to EPA.
Our Geographic Limits
Part of the challenge of sewage in Puget Sound is geography: Because of the way water circulates in the Sound, pollution doesn’t just wash out to sea, as many imagine. It sticks around, as if held by a bowl. Discharges in one city can cause problems in a community many miles away. For instance, because of currents and underwater topography, pollutants from around the region tend to accumulate in places like southern Puget Sound. Tacoma, non-intuitively, is downstream of Seattle, and Olympia is downstream of both of them.
Lack of Political Urgency
In addition to these geographic challenges, a big part of the problem is political inertia: For years, polls have shown that people support efforts to make sure that the water in Puget Sound is clean, for orca and salmon, for Dungeness crab and kelp, for people and for treaty obligations. And yet this iconic water environment remains unnecessarily polluted.
In the 1990s, the state set up grants and loans to help cities and counties transition beyond just settling out solids. This was supposed to help them update to the second level of sewage treatment: measures like aeration and biological treatment.
At the time, King County Metro, a precursor to King County’s current Wastewater Treatment Division, and Tacoma argued that these measures weren’t necessary, that they were too expensive and that no one cared about sewage. Despite multiple administrative orders and pressure from environmental organizations, it took King County 18 years to install the needed upgrades.
“Sadly, with nutrient pollution, King County and Tacoma appear to be using the same tired playbook as in the 1970s when they resisted secondary treatment,” says Roberts.
During the 2000s and 2010s, the state and local governments around Puget Sound engaged in years of process, public comment and study to address nutrient pollution. Along the way, Ecology developed
a sophisticated water quality model, the Salish Sea Model. Ecology also denied a petition to trigger a different part of the Clean Water Act that would have immediately required all plants to implement more stringent regulation for discharging sewage into the Sound as it finalized the scientific background. WCA made comments and mobilized the public during all the many stages of this long back and forth.
Ecology Finally Steps Up
Finally, in 2021, the Department of Ecology issued the Puget Sound Nutrient General Permit, which requires cities and counties to plan how to lessen nutrient pollution. The general permit puts on record that cities and counties cannot continue to grow with outdated sewage treatment practices. It makes clear that limits on pollution are needed.
WCA had concerns about how those limits would be calculated. With the Suquamish Tribe, WCA filed an appeal to the Pollution Control Board. For very different reasons, the dischargers also appealed.
Litigating over Sewage
Prior to Ecology issuing the general permit, a group of cities, counties and sewer districts that discharge sewage into the Sound filed a case against Ecology to block Ecology from even issuing the general permit in the first place. Tacoma, Birch Bay Water and Sewer District, Kitsap County, Southwest Suburban Sewer District, and Alderwood Water and Wastewater District.
“They did the equivalent of flinging a bunch of spaghetti noodles against the wall,” Roberts explains. “They made a bunch of arguments, not all of which made sense, hoping that at least one would stick.”
That case eventually went to the Washington State Supreme Court after a Court of Appeals ruling agreed with Ecology on some of the dischargers’ claims but still left a few spaghetti noodles on the wall.
In 2024, WCA teamed up with the Suquamish Tribe and the Squaxin Island Tribe to submit an amicus, or “friend of the court,” brief to the state Supreme Court. The brief pointed out the flaws in the dischargers’ case. We essentially held that it was as if the dischargers wanted to force a win on a technicality in the last quarter of a football match. And the technicality didn't even make sense. Nor did it have any legal merit.
The Washington State Supreme Court agreed with our amicus brief and the state’s defense in a September 4, 2024 ruling. The court ruling tossed out the last of the dischargers’ claims. Now, we are back to the appeal in the Pollution Control Hearings Board, which was the appropriate venue for addressing these issues in the first place.
Can We Afford Not to Act?
“We deserve clean water and healthy waters. It’s unfair that my hometown of Tacoma is not doing its part when the second-largest city in the state, Spokane, already has modern sewage treatment that removes nutrient pollution,” Roberts says.
The population of the Puget Sound region is expected to double by 2070. That many more people would approximately double nitrogen from sewage discharges if current treatment plant technology remains unchanged. That would further reduce oxygen levels in Puget Sound. That will end our quality of life.
Those that resist the move to address nutrient pollution often cite cost, saying that ratepayers won’t tolerate increased bills. But can we really afford to double the sewage pollution in the Sound? What effect will that have on wildlife, on Tribes’ ability to fish as they have since time immemorial, on our futures? Can you imagine a Sound with large die-off zones like the Gulf of Mexico? How could salmon and orca survive such conditions? How could we?
Now is the time for change.
Nuisance macroalgae, supercharged by nutrient pollution, on a Puget Sound beach. Photo by Department of Ecology.
Past, Present and Future
Fossil fuel infrastructure has become such a part of our lives that it’s easy to forget that 165 years ago it was hardly here at all. Coal has a longer history, but almost all the rest—the pipelines, the gas stations, the oil well fields and oil tar sands fields, the refineries, the oil tankers, the oil trains, and more— have come into being since the first oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859.
Within decades, oil and its related products supercharged the Industrial Revolution, putting development and resource extraction on fast forward, creating more human wealth and material comfort (for some) than ever before in history.
Of course, this boom created countless other problems, including: climate chaos fueled by the burning of all that oil, gas, coal and related products but also microplastic pollution that is already present in most people’s organs, ecosystems transected and divided by roads; air and water pollution that kills people, plants, and animals; urban areas developed for the needs of cars not people. Today’s imperial powers cause and support wars, genocide and oppression because of the perceived need to protect access to oil and gas.
The state of Washington is a crucial link in this toxic fossil fuel network that, quite literally, covers the world in a suffocating web. Though there were
no oil refineries here before the 1950s, today our state remains endlessly attractive to the dirty fossil fuel industry as an ideal place for refineries and transshipment facilities that can take the raw materials from Alaska, the Bakken oil fields of the upper Midwest and Canada’s Alberta tar sands, process them and ship them from our ports to California and global markets, especially in Asia.
At Washington Conservation Action, our efforts to block new fossil fuel infrastructure go back to the 1970s. In the pages that follow, you’ll see what exists now and the major projects that we, with partners and coalitions, have managed to block. You’ll also see an outline of our current challenges. The inertia and power of the current system is huge. The fight to contain it requires endless perseverance.
Above: Anacortes refinery. Photo by Walter Siegmund.
WHAT EXISTS
The map on this page shows the broad outlines of fossil fuel infrastructure in the state of Washington. Remember, these are just the biggest elements. Publicly available maps of local facilities are limited to major lines within counties. In addition to what you see on this map, think about how many homes in the state have gas stoves, furnaces and water heaters. How many homes use oil tanks or propane tanks for heat? What about all the regional and local pipelines that deliver these fuels to homes and distributors? What about the 3-4,000 gas stations? If we could get the data to map all that, much of the state would be covered in endless lines and dots.
Note that this map just shows the major oil transit routes in Puget Sound and along our coast. It can’t convey the enormity of 736 tankers traveling through our vital waters each year. More than half the oil that travels through our state moves by vessel. And globally, 40 percent of the world’s shipping tonnage is just moving oil and gas and coal around to be burned. Each trip carries not only fossil fuels, but the risk of those fuels spilling.
Fossil Fuel Facilities in Washington State
Cherry Point Refinery (BP, Cherry Point)
Ferndale Refinery (Phillips 66, Ferndale)
Petrogas West (Ferndale, propane and butane)
Puget Sound Refinery (HF Sinclair, Anacortes)
Anacortes Refinery (Marathon, Anacortes)
U.S. Oil Refinery (Tacoma)
Tacoma PSE LNG Refinery
SeaPort Sound Terminal (Tacoma)
Major
WHAT WE’VE BLOCKED
• Tesoro Savage Oil Terminal (Vancouver)
Tesoro Savage would have been the largest crude oil-by-rail terminal in the nation. Each day, four trains would have been needed to deliver the oil, as well as a 700-foot tanker to take the oil down the Columbia River. A huge public movement defeated this terminal.
• NuStar Energy (Vancouver)
NuStar Energy currently operates a bulk terminal at the Port of Vancouver on the Columbia River. The company proposed to retrofit their facility to become an oil-by-rail terminal. Defeated in 2023.
• Westway Terminal Company and Imperium Renewables (Grays Harbor)
Proposed retrofits of two terminals with capacity to receive 5 million gallons of crude per day from oil trains.
• U.S. Development Group (Grays Harbor, WA)
In 2012, proposed building a new oil-by-rail terminal that would have received 45,000 barrels of crude per day.
• Shell Oil (Anacortes, WA)
Shell Puget Sound Refinery announced in 2016 that it would drop its plans to construct a crude oil-by-rail facility in Anacortes. Growing local and regional opposition, and uncertain economics contributed to Shell’s decision.
• Cherry Point, North Sound
Gateway Pacific Coal Terminal, opposed for years. Defeated when Lummi Nation invoked their Treaty Rights.
Prevented an oil port in Port Angeles and two pipelines from crossing the bottom of Puget Sound to Cherry Point
Cherry Point. Stopped construction of offshore oil drilling rigs and two industrial piers
• Phasing out of coal plants/coal terminals
‐ Centralia Coal Power Plant, to close in spring 2025
‐ Port of Morrow Coal Terminal, on the Columbia River
‐ Port Westward Coal Terminal, also on the Columbia River
‐ Millennium Bulk Terminals for coal export in Longview, on the Columbia River
‐ Grays Harbor Coal Terminal
‐ Gateway Pacific Coal Terminal near Bellingham
• Waterside Oil Refinery (Longview)
Waterside Energy proposed to build a crude oil refinery, along with a biofuel refinery and LPG export terminal in Longview, Washington.
• Kalama Methanol Manufacturing and Marine Export Facility (Kalama)
• Northwest Innovation Works Methanol (Tacoma)
ON OUR RADAR
TransMountain Pipeline
Tacoma Seaport Sound
Philips 66 Ferndale
BP Cherry Point
Anacortes Land Use Code Changes
Tacoma Tideflats Subarea Plan
Zenith Energy, Portland, OR
Global Partners, Port Westward, OR
Tribes reconnect with ancestral landscapes, promote respectful recreation
On a sparkling crisp Sunday morning, the first day of fall, the mountain is out in all its glory as a group of about 15 members of the Muckleshoot and Tulalip Tribes, ages one to 51, head up the Glacier Basin Trail. They’re headed toward a lookout point where they’ll be able to see where Emmons Glacier ends, becoming the source of the White River, which flows through the Muckleshoot Reservation 50 miles to the northwest.
Rachel Heaton, a Muckleshoot Tribal member of Duwamish descent and a cultural educator for the Tribe, keeps up a running commentary as they make progress through lowland red cedar forest, pointing through the trees to the water that rushes toward the plateau.
“The glacier gives life to the river, that ties us to this place. The rivers gave life to our peoples. Six of our Tribes built fishing villages along this river. (Muckleshoot is the name of the place, not of the several villages and bands of Duwamish and Puyallup descent who moved to the reservation there.) Many of the Native names for Mt. Rainer mean ‘mother of waters.’ The Puyallup call her ‘Tahoma.’ We Muckleshoot call her Təqʷuʔməʔ (Ta-ko-ba). Other names are Ta-co-bet, Tacoma.”
Heaton leads similar hikes several times a month. She says she wants to connect her people back to the places that form the foundation of their culture. Washington Tribes have persevered during nearly two centuries of oppression, Heaton now perseveres in the step-by-step work of reestablishing the ancient connection between people and land.
Managing Recreation
It’s also part of a larger context of managing recreation on public lands and making sure that
Tribal perspectives and sovereignty are considered when agencies and departments seek to balance the public’s desire to get outdoors with the damage that crowds of outdoorsy people can do to both ecosystems and to Indigenous sacred spaces. For instance, visits to state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) lands increased by 21 percent between 2019 and 2020.
Heaton and Stephanie Masterman, Washington Conservation Action’s Tribal Nations Program senior manager, met earlier this year to discuss these issues with DNR officials, which held four regional meetings with Tribal nations to gather input on its Outdoor Access and Responsible Recreation Strategic Plan, scheduled to be finished by the end of 2024.
Tribal nations have for several years raised concerns about the impact of recreation on wild places, citing it as a major threat to Tribal sovereignty. Recreation is a leading cause of damage to both plants and animals on public lands in the United States, and around the world.
Crowded Trails Stress Wildlife
Studies in Washington have shown that crowded hiking trails cause stress that leads to elk calve deaths. Pollution and erosion damage salmon streams. Noise from camping, skiing, hiking and other activities pushes animals from their native ranges, even making them turn nocturnal. Surprisingly, non-motorized sports have more impact in this way. The state’s growing population, and the growing popularity of outdoor pursuits especially after the pandemic, suggest that these trends will increase.
In 2020, the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission asked Gov. Jay Inslee to create a task force to work with Tribes on solutions. That effort has since grown to include an expanded group that
Opposite: The glacial lake that eventually becomes the White River. Photo by Heather Millar.
now includes the Governor’s Office of Indian Affairs (GOIA), Department of Fish and Wildlife, DNR, the Recreation and Conservation Office, Governor’s policy staff, and representatives of the 29 federally recognized Tribes with Treaty Rights or other protected Tribal rights in Washington. The group is working toward a charter by the end of this year and will work toward a statewide plan.
“Often, in these discussions, agencies will ask us to prove that our peoples use these lands,” Masterman explains. “National parks, in this country and around the world, were formed expressly to exclude Native peoples from the landscapes where they had lived since time immemorial. It’s a long process to undo that damage, to persevere, to restore those ties.”
Restoring Ancient Ties
Heaton did not set out to be an agent of that restoration. She was just looking for a way to exercise while pregnant with her son Dahnahhi, now six. She says it didn’t feel right to go back to the gym.
“I decided that I would start hiking,” she says. “As the hikes got longer, and I started getting out here more and more, I noticed that I never ran into any other Natives when I was hiking.
“I believe that’s not only a loss for our people. It is a loss for everyone. We need to be in this park. If we Native people aren’t out here on this mountain, our language isn’t here. If we aren’t here, our stories are not here. I’m trying to change this. It happens one person at a time, one hike at a time.”
As the group moves up past the red cedar forest into subalpine forest of white pines, fir and yellow cedar, Heaton continues building connections, sharing knowledge, engaging in the patient work of making people feel that they belong in this park.
“You can take these green fir cones, submerge them in water and sugar, and simmer them to make a syrup that you can use like maple syrup. Or, if you have a cold, you can boil these evergreen boughs and breathe in the steam to clear your airways. See these leaves here? The salmon berries are gone now, and you can make a tea with the leaves that’s rich in vitamin C.”
The younger kids in the group run up and down trail, probably covering twice the distance of their elders, pointing out things with their hiking poles. “Look at this mushroom! Look at that waterfall!”
After almost two miles of ascent, the group stops to rest by the side of a creek, just below the switchbacks that go up to a vantage point on Emmons Moraine, the rocky debris left after a glacier retreats. Everyone takes a break, sitting on boulders of glacially smoothed granite.
The water flows over other, smaller rocks nearby, making the point that Native language inhabits this landscape. The creek makes a sound very like the Lushootseed word for “river,” “stuluk, stuluk, stuluk.” It’s almost as if the land has held a bit of Native culture, persevering until the people who belong to this land could return.
No one says much. Few other hikers pass since it’s late in the season. It feels special, private almost. The kids take turns throwing rocks in the river. People just rest, just exist in this place, content to be in this moment. One of the Muckleshoot men softly plays a recording of Tribal music. The ancient notes and rhythms hang in the autumn air.
After a while, the group tackles the switchbacks and arrives at the lookout point. From here, everyone takes in the Emmons Glacier, the largest piece of ice on the mountain, and the thin green ribbon of meltwater that undulates down to a milky blue-green glacial lake below, and will, from there, become the White River.
People ask Heaton about 2023. That’s when she and six other Native climbers attempted to summit the mountain before weather made it impossible. She points toward the glacier.
Native Visibility
“The place where we had to turn back. It’s called Disappointment Cleaver. It needs a different name,” she laughs. “But it was not about the peaks, not about conquering anything. There were people climbing there for thousands and thousands of years before anyone recorded it. This is about creating visibility for our people on this mountain. It’s about changing the narrative.”
She gestures toward the ridges. “We used to have berry camps along the ridge lines.”
She points east, and then south and then west. “We had traditional trails all over this mountain. We used them to fish, to gather, to trade. We traveled through the passes in times of war.”
Heaton says that, over the years, she feels that she has developed a relationship with the mountain. “I believe that nature is sentient,” she says. “Each time I come here, I make an offering. I ask for permission to explore it…Nature has healed me. I want my people to have access to that.”
Left: Rachel Heaton, in turquoise shirt, points out the Emmons Glacier to Muckleshoot and Tulalip Tribal members. Photo by Heather Millar.
2024 BULLITT PRIZE
Winners work at nexus of Tribal culture, social justice and conservation
Without realizing it, the winners of the 2024 Bullitt Prize, twin brothers Free and Raven Borsey, have been working toward this honor since they were kids.
Imagine an early morning, some 13 years ago, their Lummi Youth Canoe Family (LYCF), a group of young teens and chaperones traveling by traditional canoe from their home in Lummi to the central British Columbia coast, pulled over to shore. It was slack tide, the short period in tidal waters when there’s no movement either way, the safest time to attempt a difficult passage. They were taking the measure of the Dodd Narrows. At this place, Mudge Island pinches ocean currents against the eastern shore of Victoria Island, creating one of the most dangerous passages in the province.
The waters of Dodd Narrows often look calm on the surface, Free explains, but underneath, the currents and whirlpools are ferocious. They, and several dozen other canoes and support boats from Lummi and from other Tribes, were on the annual canoe journey hosted that year in Bella Bella, more than 300 miles north. Canoe journeys, once made illegal by the federal government, have in the last four decades been a vibrant aspect of reclaiming Native culture.
“Then our skipper puts us in the first two seats of the 12-person canoe. And he pushes us all out into the water, the first canoe to attempt passage that day. All the crews from the other canoes and
support boats watching us,” Raven says. “We set the pace for the rest of the canoe. We get into the narrows. It seems like it’s going OK, we’re pulling hard. Then a whirlpool forms, gets a hold of the canoe. Free and I are paddling, paddling. Then we realize that our paddles aren’t connecting with water, but air.”
The whirlpool is trying to suck down the back of the canoe, where their skipper is sitting. It looks as if the canoe is doing a wheelie.
“Then the whirlpool lets us go. And we take off at 11 knots, shooting through the narrows,” Free says. “We make it through. Everyone was wide-eyed. We can hear all the people from the other canoes and support boats cheering. We felt such pride to see the other canoes follow us on this ancestral highway.”
Free and Raven were just 14 then. Up to that point, they had had few times when they had felt that kind of accomplishment, of pride, of profound connection to culture, landscape and tradition. They had been kids on the edge, facing all the societal problems of addiction and prejudice and gangs, and doing so without feeling that they had their footing, a place.
“We didn’t know what we were doing,” Free says. “We thought we were always bad.”
That day at Dodd Narrows, they felt centered, valued. Finally, they had a place.
The desire to pass on these feelings of connection, and of personal and cultural pride is one of many
reasons the brothers plan to use much of the Bullitt Prize award, $100,000 in two annual $50,000 grants, to revive LYCF. The Bullitt Prize is a grant, with no strings, meant to support emerging environmental leaders. Accordingly, the brothers, now 27, will use some of the money for tuition and other expenses. But they also plan to use the money to make LYCF a force for Native culture, for conservation work and for social and environmental justice.
“We are confronting two major issues: climate change and social injustice,” the brothers wrote in their application. “By reinstating a successful program, our voice and our approach to ‘Indigenuity’ [the application of deep Native wisdom to current problems] will be shared far and wide. Research shows that when conservation efforts are partnered with Indigenous participation, they have more impact.”
Before they grew into cultural leaders and conservation activists, Raven and Free had to overcome one barrier after another. Their parents struggled with addiction. The boys entered foster care at age two. They credit their foster parents and their whole community with raising them. Through their early life, they say they coped by staying in constant motion: They signed up for whatever school projects there were. They went out for six to eight sports a year.
The canoe family formed a crucial turning point: Despite
Free (left) and Raven (right) sit beneath a historic portrait of the Lummi Nation hanging in the lobby at Silver Reef Casino Resort in Ferndale, WA. Photo by Mallori Pryse.
being encouraged by teachers and community members, they never felt like they were enough. Pulling with the canoe family taught them to truly believe in themselves, they say.
The brothers had had to persevere all their lives, just to survive. Now they began to do so as a choice, with joy. They learned to keep paddling, despite bad weather and fatigue. They began to learn how to lead. The canoe journeys fostered connections with peers, mentors and other canoe families from around the Pacific, from Hawaii to California, to northern Alaska and New Zealand.
Even though they were disconnected from their parents, the canoe family helped them to connect even more deeply with Lummi culture: the stories, the songs, the ceremonies, the traditional ways of hunting, fishing and gathering. It exposed them to environmental damage as they paddled through polluted waters, and observed how much healthier wildlife became the farther they paddled from cities. It helped them develop skills to fight for environmental justice as they got involved in advocacy.
At any given time, the Lummi nation has several canoe families. LYCF was unique in that it was also an environmental non-profit organization that operated year-round. In the canoe journey off-season, the youth and their mentors prepared for the next year’s journey while participating in various environmental projects.
At the time the Borsey brothers were teens, LYCF worked to oppose the proposed biggest coal terminal in North America on Xwe’Chi’eXen (Cherry Point), waters ancestral to the Lummi who live in the San Juan Islands since time immemorial. Many groups, including WCA, formed a coalition to oppose that project. Lummi Nation played a key role in defeating it.
“We were pulled out of a
harmful environment and given a healthy outlet. We saw early what destructive forces looked like. We learned how to take a stand. We learned the importance of helping individuals reconnect with their heritage,” the brothers explained in their Bullitt Prize application. “Our belief is that embracing a path forward for the environment starts with bringing people together in community with culture, one paddle at a time. One song and dance at a time. One Nation at a time.”
One of the founders of the LCYF, skipper and mentor to the brothers, passed away. Then various bureaucratic problems ended with the canoe family being disbanded in 2019, following the paddle to Lummi. Most painful for the brothers, the canoe, untended, has fallen into disrepair. Lummi culture does not recognize stark lines between living and not living, between human and animal, or human and landscape, or human and plant. The canoe, culturally, becomes a relative of those who paddle in it.
“You work with the canoe,” Raven says. “It fosters relationships. It takes care of you. You take care of it. In the last few years, we and a couple others tried to maintain the canoe, but we could only do so much. It is like a family member. We are thrilled that now we can restore it.”
Since pulling with the canoe family, Raven has finished an anthropology degree at Western Washington University (WWU) in Bellingham, being honored this year as his department’s most outstanding graduate. Free is finishing an environmental studies degree at Northwest Indian College on the Lummi reservation. Free serves on the boards of Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association, and Paper Whale, a Bellingham arts group. Raven has been accepted to graduate school at WWU, in the anthropology track, and also serves as a founder of the Whatcom Racial Equity Commission. Both work in various roles at Children of the Setting Sun Productions, an Indigenous media company in Bellingham. Their vision is to restore the LYCF canoe and to create a different kind of canoe family, which will also act as an environmental coalition on behalf of local Indigenous voices and develop relationships with other conservation groups and Tribal natural resource departments. They also plan to emphasize passing on traditional ecological knowledge to the next generation. They recognize the challenges.
“Lummi Nation has turned down lucrative deals for the sake of preservation…to challenge corporatization,” the brothers say. “These fights have to continue because there is no fairy tale ending where we canoe off into the sunset. Our responsibility is to steer the canoe into adversity to fight for what we believe in.”
For an in-depth Q&A with Free and Raven Borsey, please see our website at wcaction.us/2024BullittPrize
Free (left) and Raven stand at the Northwest Indian College campus. Photo by Mallori Pryse.
Couple plans to pass on sustainable practices
There’s an old saying, “The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.”
And that is just the start of the story of Mike and Leslie Saelens. For they probably won’t live to see the harvest of all their timberland. And they’re OK with that.
The Saelens have lived on Whidbey Island for 30 years. They like to go camping, and to hike in the woods with their Golden retriever, Jasper. In 2021, after they retired, they decided to invest in a small forest tract on the Olympic peninsula, 113 acres of hemlock, Douglas fir and alder, just south of Neah Bay, on the road to Ozette.
“It’s designated commercial forest, so we have to get some lumber out of it eventually,” says Mike, 71. “The county said, ‘Are you sure you know what’s required for acreage that is zoned ‘commercial forest’?”
So Mike started researching. In The Seattle Times, he came upon an editorial by Rachel Baker, forest program director at Washington Conservation Action. It explained how extending the time between harvests from 40 years to 80 years more than doubles the wood output, because trees don’t reach their maximum annual growth rates until they’re at least 80 years old. Other studies show that growing trees longer also stores more carbon, helping to mitigate climate change.
Mike also enrolled in Washington State University’s Forest School, an 8-week, online course followed by an in-person session of lectures and a field trip. “It was aimed at small forest landowners like us,” Mike says. “I learned about how to get the most out of the canopy, how to thin trees to promote growth, how to get nutrients back into the soil.”
“The more we learned, and the more we thought about it, the more we wanted to use this small forest to help slow climate change,” Leslie explains. “We’ve seen the negative impacts around the country, and around Puget Sound. We wanted to do our small part.”
The management plan the Saelens filed with Clallam County goes like this: The trees now average about 26 years old. Harvest one-fifth of their forest, about 22 acres, in 30 years. Replant. Harvest the next fifth a decade later. Replant. Repeat this pattern until the whole tract has been harvested once. After a full cycle, the first tract harvested will be ready in just a couple decades, providing steady income and helping the planet as well.
“We’re still working out how to make sure the plan will hold after we’re gone,” Mike says.
A couple other challenges remain. They’d like to do pre-commercial thinning of the tract, but it’s too expensive, even with help from the Department of Natural Resources. They’re hoping that they might use their plan for a sale or exchange of carbon credits, but that reassessment is still under review. Whether they might benefit in that way remains to be seen.
In the meantime, Mike and Leslie have set up an off-the-grid trailer on the property. They visit every six weeks, to enjoy the quiet and the wildlife. “City lights don’t impact the clear night sky in this remote part of the Olympic peninsula,” Leslie says. “Stargazing is amazing!”
Above: The stump of an old growth tree gives life to a new generation, as young trees sprout from it. Photo by Mallori Pryse.
COMPLEXITY IS THE CONSTANT.
NO LEGACY IS ALL GOOD, ALL BAD.
Former Gov. Dan Evans died in September at age 98. The outpouring that followed was loud, effusive and deserved. Evans, a progressive Republican, served a then-unprecedented three terms as governor from 1965-1977 and one as a U.S. senator (1983-1989). He was responsible for much progress on the environment, among many other things. But his life also serves as a reminder that complexity is something that always perseveres, in people and in nature.
Washington Environmental Council (WEC), the predecessor organization of Washington Conservation Action (WCA), worked closely with Evans to build legislative support for the state Department of Ecology. At that time, 1970, Democrats controlled the state Senate, Republicans the state House.
Joan Thomas, then executive director of WEC, played a pivotal role in getting the bill over the finish line. This, as she told The Seattle Times, involved a lot of “crossing over.” First, find out what Democrats in the Senate wanted, then go over to the House side to see what the Republican majority there could tolerate. Then two or three times a week, Thomas would coordinate with Evan’s staff so the governor could talk to his leadership in the House. Then Thomas would go back and do it all again.
Evans signed the bill that created the Washington Department of Ecology on February 23, 1970. “Ecology,” as many now call it, opened for business on July 1 of that year, four months before the federal Environmental Protection Agency would do the same.
Evans, along with WEC and others, also helped create the state Environmental Policies Act, which analyzes the environmental impact of government actions. A mountain climber, skier and yachtsman, he played a major part in creating North Cascades National Park, adding coastline to Olympic National Park and expanding various wilderness areas. In the early 1970s, when California closed its doors to Southeast Asian refugees, Evans welcomed them in Washington. He supported abortion rights, signed a bill that mandated education for children with disabilities.
After he left politics, he worked on climate change, civic issues and served on many boards.
But during the Fish Wars of the 1960s and 1970s, Evans took a stand on the wrong side of history. Washington’s Tribes were then fighting for the right, guaranteed by treaty, to fish in the areas that that their ancestors had used since time immemorial. In October 1965, game wardens violently attacked a group of about 100 holding a “fish-in,” lowering nets in a traditional area then considered illegal. Wardens moved in, clubbing protesters, banging a young girls’ face against a tree stump, kneeing people in the back, even injuring a television cameraperson.
Then newly elected to his first term, Evans backed the game wardens’ tactics and told The Seattle Times that those who participated in the fish-ins were “the irresponsible element” who had committed “flagrant violations of the state’s conservation laws.”
The academic article that highlights this quote also points out that Native fishers at that time harvested just 3 percent of the fish caught in Washington. Commercial boats took 80 percent; the rest were hooked by sportsmen.
We point this out not to discount the many good things that Evans did. In all fairness, WCA did not take a stand during the Fish Wars. We have since learned that environmental progress is stronger when we uphold Tribal sovereignty and respect Treaty Rights. We point this out to emphasize that no organization, no person, no legacy is all good or all bad. In this time of hyper-partisanship, many forces drive us toward absolutes.
Yet both nature and people constantly show us that life is so much more nuanced than that. Nature gives us rainbows and wildflowers, but also hurricanes and droughts. Politicians and organizations don’t always get it right. Intricate complexity—that perseveres. Let’s celebrate the wins, there are plenty, and remember the missteps to urge us on to do better for people and nature.
Above: Gov. Dan Evans, n.d., public domain.
As we continue to process the 2024 election, the devastating national results and the resoundingly progressive results in Washington state, we know that a theme of the upcoming long legislative session will be defense. We need to protect our local victories, not only from federal intrusion but from those who seek to legislate at the ballot box, challenging social and environmental progress. This could take many forms, for example, changes to filing rules or information requirements for ballot initiatives. At this point, it’s anybody’s guess what will happen but it’s definitely something worth reflection.
In every legislative session, WCA works hard to make sure that environmental laws are reflected in the state budget. If a law outlines new protections for salmon, say, we keep track and hold lawmakers accountable, making sure the funds get allocated to make those protections a reality. In November, Washington voters resoundingly defeated I-2117, an initiative that would have repealed our state’s cap-and-invest carbon law.
This means that funds from this law, the Climate Commitment Act, will rebound. It will be important to make sure that the monies raised from carbon credit auctions go to communities and projects that need them the most.
We’ll be keeping close track of the transportation budget. The last transportation package passed a few years ago, and inflation has created a gap between the predicted cost and the actual cost of these improvements. We’ll be pushing to make sure that progress continues on environmental priorities such as removing culverts from salmon streams, reducing pollution, improving public transit, creating bike lanes and pedestrian infrastructure.
We may also push for legislation that would establish a sewage outflow “right to know.” Who among us has not heard of a beach closed because of sewage in the water? We believe that communities have a right to know where that sewage originates. We’ll also be pushing for laws that help reduce stormwater pollution, storm overflows from sewage systems and street runoff that damage Puget Sound.
WCA worked throughout 2024 to support the candidacy of Dave Upthegrove, the incoming commissioner of public lands. Upthegrove was the only major candidate that did not take funds from big timber corporations and he has a detailed vision for managing our state forest lands in a way that benefits rural wood economies but also recognizes that forest have many other values: as a way to store carbon, as places for recreation and cultural value.
We’re excited to work with a forward-thinking leader at the Department of Natural Resources. That will mean supporting creative legislation, whether that’s for programs to develop a workforce for modern forest practices like selective logging or whether that’s for laws that center Tribal co-management or community forests.
Other issues we’re tracking: The WRAP Act, which would have introduced statewide recycling and standardization, failed in 2024. It will likely be reintroduced in the next session. The incoming Trump administration is likely to create chaos in many areas, but especially in green energy. What energy projects get the green light and where will be a huge issue, as has already been the case with the Goldendale stored energy project along the Columbia River.
Buckle up. It’s going to be a wild ride.
This election season, WCA staff enthusiastically worked for candidates and policies that protect people and nature as one: Gov. Jay Inslee joined our last Our Call 4 Climate Action phone bank, a campaign that gathered more than 58,000 pledges to vote from new and infrequent voters. We worked in large coalitions to defeat regressive initiatives, including I-2117 which would have repealed our state’s carbon pricing law. Native Vote WA organized voter outreach across Tribal nations communities and ran a “sko vote den” campaign, getting out the Native vote. We hosted fundraisers, presented environmental webinars for our endorsed candidates, organized a Climate Festival at Seattle University. We tabled at concerts and festivals and special events, playing “No on 2117” corn hole around the state.
Civic Engagement Organizer
Grace Doleshel tabling at Seattle Orca Month Rally in June.
CEO Macy, Gov.-elect Bob Ferguson, state Senator Claudia Kauffman, Suquamish Tribal Chair Leonard Forsman, and EPA rep. Casey Sixkiller.
Vancouver Washington Democrats join the NO on I-2117 fight.
Issaquah Day of Action.
Gov. Jay Inslee, Board member Jovan Johnson Hall and CEO Alyssa Macy at No on 2117 fundraiser at Hall's Bellingham home.
Whidbey Island House Party fundraiser.
Actress and activist Jane Fonda joins NO on I-2117 fight.
Native Vote WA tabling in Puyallup.
Door knocking with Chelsea Dimas, candidate for state representative in LD 14.
QUICK UPDATES
Greenwashing Guide: Stand Up To Oil has released a greenwashing guide and evaluation checklist to help communities and advocates realistically analyze projects proposed in their area.
Our project to drive support for cleaning up toxic MTCA sites under Yakima schools kicked off with its first live event this fall.
State Lands Website launched. This website will help dispel misinformation about forest management and trust lands put out by the timber industry. It communicates opportunities to improve ecological forest management on state public lands.
Digital Communications Coordinator Aida Amirul tabling at University of Washington.
Staff at Netse Mot event at Seattle's Paramount Theater in October.
NO on I-2117 corn hole!
Yakima Community Organizer Karina Solorio tabling at The Gorge.
Staff at Tacoma Earth Gay in July.
Staff and supporters attend Queer the Vote event in Tacoma in November.
With Nuestra Casa in the Yakima Valley.
CEO Macy (far right) at Makah Days in August.
Climate Fest at Anchorhead Coffee near Seattle University in October.
Toria Baldwin (he/she)
WCA Ed Fund Administrative Associate
Toria has a deeply rooted love of travel. Originally from a small steel mill town in the Midwest, he leveraged his bachelor's degree in Linguistics and East Asian studies to move abroad in 2012, only returning in 2023. Toria is passionate about a great many things, including music, fish hatcheries, human rights, language, and making the outdoors accessible for everyone.
Holly Hines (she/her)
Local Government Affairs Senior Manager
Yakama Nation Housing Authority. She has experience in Tribal government, policy development, auditing, leadership and project management. Andrea holds a B.S. in Business Management from Central Washington University. Outside work, Andrea is a mother to three children and her nephew.
Megan Ouchida (she/her)
Donor Engagement Senior Manager
For the past few years Holly has worked for Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon in the state House of Representatives. Raised in Wisconsin, she got her B.A. in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana in Missoula. Holly lives in West Seattle with her husband, Sam, and their 3-year-old dog, Rocket. In her free time Holly loves reading fiction, long distance walking, gardening, and going to the aquarium.
Kenzie Knapp (she/they)
Political and Civic Engagement Coordinator
Kenzie Knapp was born and raised in Bellingham, Washington before moving to Tacoma to study interdisciplinary environmental science and policy as well as the theatrical arts in the south Puget Sound. She launched her environmental political career with fellow organizers in the Sunrise Movement, through working with the Tacoma Tree Foundation, and most recently as a field organizer and youth coordinator for the No on 2117 campaign.
Andrea Matheny (she/her)
Tribal Nations Program Director
An enrolled Yakama Tribal member, Andrea has served the Yakama Nation for 32 years, most recently as executive director for the
Growing up in Portland, Megan developed a deep connection to nature. She has over six years of experience in the environmental nonprofit sector, most recently at the Bird Alliance of Oregon (formerly Portland Audubon). In her new role, Megan stewards a large portfolio of supporters. She holds a B.S. in Environmental Studies from Portland State University. Outside work, Megan is a film photographer, musician, and outdoor enthusiast.
Julian Santos (he/him)
Climate and Clean Energy Senior Manager
Born and raised in Miami, Julian moved to Seattle in 2022 to complete his Master of Public Administration degree at the University of Washington. He brings a background in legislative relations, stakeholder engagement, and advocacy. Outside of work, he enjoys attending civic events, playing with his dog Maggie, and going to concerts and sports games.
Mariana Turrubiates Garcia (she/her/ella)
Development Associate
Mariana has worked on projects ranging from leading the PepsiCo Foundation activities for a manufacturing plant to the maritime exports of John Deere from Mexico to Brazil. She recently interned with Native Vote Washington. Mariana is Mexican and spent her childhood surrounded by rivers and beaches on the Gulf of Mexico.
Washington Conservation Action , in partnership with Washington Conservation Action Education Fund, is committed to environmental justice by advancing bold progress for people and the environment for more than 50 years. We celebrate the policy and political success we have accomplished together with people like you.
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