Feb. 8, 2008 Whidbey Examiner

by Dan Pederson
For the Examiner

On a good day, residents along West Beach can look across at Smith and Minor islands six miles in the distance. It's as close as most will ever get to these tiny outposts of Island County soil, since they are part of a national wildlife refuge and it is illegal to set foot there.

But the islands soon may loom larger to Whidbey residents if a proposed aquatic reserve comes into being.

Unlike Whidbey and Camano islands, crawling with people and automobiles, Smith and Minor are crawling with marine birds and mammals. Smith is one of the last two breeding sites in Puget Sound for tufted puffins and hosts a large colony of rhinoceros auklets.

Both birds are burrow nesters that favor these islands for their glacial till geology, said Kevin Ryan of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, who manages them as part of the San Juan Islands National Wildlife Refuge. They also attract cormorants, glaucous winged gulls, black oystercatchers, harlequin ducks and black brant, and serve as a haul-out for Stellar sea lions and harbor seals.

The birds and mammals fall under the protection of the migratory bird treaty act and the marine mammal protection act. Boaters must stay at least 200 yards away. Activities that cause birds to flush or mammals to move to the water are in violation.

In the next two years, Smith and Minor islands could become the centerpiece of a new DNR aquatic reserve giving added protection to the surrounding tidelands and bed lands. And the reserve would hit home for Whidbey residents because it might extend to the Whidbey shoreline between Point Partridge and Joseph Whidbey State Park.

Seattle-based People for Puget Sound outlined such a proposal in January to the Island County Marine Resources Committee. Cyrilla Cook, shorelines program manager for People for Puget Sound, briefed the MRC and said the lengthy application process - actually a "nominating" process - is just beginning. As it gathers steam, community meetings will be held next summer to invite public input. The MRC is studying it with interest, both for the added protection and for any community concerns it might raise....

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