The effort to turn one of the only areas on Camano with room to fly a kite into a Salmon habitat failed. Many Camano Islanders give thanks for that. I give thanks to many Camano Islanders for their help and leadership in this success.
The State withdrew support for the project because of a lack of scientific information. That inadequate information was pointed out by some citizens at a contentious Water Resources Advisory Committee (WRAC) meeting.
Never mind the people, the heavily one-sided WRAC board, (for which I was not allowed to make any appointments) pressed on. The failed process began when the Salmon Technical Advisory Group (TAG) ranked the project without thorough, if any, research into the area.
The Salmon TAG is a group of non government organizations (NGO), such as Conservation districts, put together and led by staff of Island County Public Health. It is this group's duty to establish a list of projects to spend money from the Salmon Recovery fund pot and prioritize it.
This Habitat project list is supposed to be based on State law which requires these projects to be proven "recovery" efforts and not creations. Our local Salmon TAG dropped the ball and pushed the inappropriate list on to our WRAC.
Enter our concerned citizens who were in attendance at the WRAC meeting when this came up. They did the research and determined this area on Camano was never a Salmon habitat.
When they brought this to the attention of the WRAC at a largely attended meeting (which I attended as well), only two WRAC board members were willing to ask for more scientific review.
I followed up with State departments to be sure the minority report was included in the documents they received, but when our State Representatives got wind of the issue, the walls came tumbling down.
Those of us on Camano can give thanks to the teamwork that saved our State Park this Thanksgiving Day.
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