PEOPLE FOR PUGET SOUND’S ‘ACTION AGENDA’
FEBRUARY 2008

Habitat Protection and Restoration

An indicator of Puget Sound’s health is the status of aquatic habitats throughout the basin.  From the crest of the Cascades to Puget Sound’s deepest abyss, plants and animals find refuge in a variety of freshwater and marine habitats.  Loss and fragmentation of those habitats due to human activities makes it a challenge for many species to survive. 

The most severe of these losses has been to coastal wetlands throughout the basin.  Dredging, filling, draining, diking, reduced water quality and introduction of invasive species have destroyed up to 75% of the wetlands ringing Puget Sound and lining the banks of its lowland river floodplains since statehood. 

Armoring marine shorelines, river banks and lakeshores has reduced the natural functions of thousands of miles of beaches and riparian habitats.  Restriction of water flow through dike, culverts, tidegates and levees has isolated thousandfs o0f acres of potentially useful habitat from the creatures that could feed, rest and grow there.

Significant state and federal programs were put in place in the 1970s that curtailed many of these direct assaults but wetlands, beaches and riparian habitats still find themselves inconveniently located in the path of our ever-expanding development and are degraded from the effects of stormwater runoff miles away. In addition to water quality programs instituted throughout the basin,

The Puget Sound Partnership must increase the number and scale of ongoing habitat protection and restoration programs.

•    Salmon Recovery Funding Board, Estuarine and Salmon Recovery Program, Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program, Aquatic Lands Enhancement Program and similar strategic capital investment programs should be strengthened through dedicated funding sources and strategic investment criteria.

•    Regulatory Programs designed to protect current habitat functions need bold agency leadership to prevent degradation and assure a net gain in habitat acreage and function as agreed to in the 2000 Puget Sound Management Plan.  The public should be given greater opportunity to receive notification and provide comment on development proposals within their Action Area.

•    Local governments must take seriously the challenges placed before them by the state to manage growth and protect multiple shoreline functions in the Growth Management Act and Shoreline Management Act.  They should also work with the state to fully utilize existing incentive programs for habitat protection like Transfer of Development  Rights, Current Use Taxation and Conservation Easements.

•    Tools such as the DNR Aquatic Reserve Program and WDFW Marine Protected Areas Program must preserve state owned aquatic lands and fish and wildlife species diversity and productive capacity in at least 20% of the Sound’s surface area.