Environmental Summit Convenes in Westport

On February 27th 14 area interest groups were represented at a locally organized “Environmental Summit” held at the Westport Maritime Museum’s McCausland Hall. The agenda for the day’s event was shaped around each group or individual reporting on their passed year’s accomplishments pertinent to benefiting the environmental health of our region’s natural resources, marine and estuarine waters, beaches, wetlands, and wildlife. In recent years similar events have been held but this year several groups came together to organize this more formal event that could perhaps continue to meet annually so local interest groups to concerned citizens might have an open forum to share information in a round table fashion about current projects, recent successes, and future goals.

The agenda opened with introductions and then proceeded with individual presentations summarizing activities and projectsover the last year. Habitat restoration work, estuary and wetland improvements, water quality monitoring, providing input to city, state, county, and federal planning efforts, and facilitating outreach and education efforts pertaining to ocean literacy and healthy area marine resources. Nearly 30 presentations were given by representatives from Grays Harbor Audubon, Grays Harbor and Nisqually National Wildlife Refuges, Friends of Grays Harbor, Sierra Club, Surfrider Foundation, Chehalis Basin Partnership, Olympic Coast Alliance, Veterans Conservation Corps, and Olympic Park Associates.

Of particular interest during the summit was participation in the summit from nationally recognized environmentalist Polly Dyer. Dyer has been a leading conservation activist in the Pacific Northwest for over half a century and a prominent figure in virtually every major campaign to protect wilderness in the state of Washington. A grassroots activist from an earlier time (Polly just turned 90 this February!) her tireless efforts have resulted in any number of ground breaking successes for the environment. She helped pass the 1960’s Wilderness Act which today protects over 100 million acres of wilderness in the US and in 1964 helped create the North Cascades National Park. Dyer’s current work with the Olympic Coast Alliance is dedicated to protecting the land and sea interface encompassed by the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary.

During the second half of the day the summit agenda turned to the subject of discussing individual ideas for future goals and projects for the year to come. Ideas were plentiful and the group engage with much emphasis on community and youth outreach especially in the form of more “hands on” or field trip type offerings, continued work on upland, marine, and estuarine habitat restorations, and continued Chehalis Basin management and monitoring to name but a few. Other ideas included supporting the continued work to install a Doppler radar station in Westport, opening a coastal marine weather and science facility, become involved with the “National Estuary Program,” implement eco-tourism, create coastal stewardship coalition or similar, compile history of environmental issues, events, and solutions of our region, implement environmental learning areas in all schools, and promote citizen and stakeholder involvement in state and local decision making processes.

Often contentious, environmentalism and finding “greener” ways of doing things has now worked it’s way into nearly everyone’s life, and perhaps for good reason when one looks at every day evidence of the abundance of environmental health issues we face today. Things such as air and water pollution, plastics in our marine waters, endangered species, dwindling forests, climate change, and ocean acidification are just some of the issues we face and sadly there appears no shortage of new issues that continue to arise. The first Earth Day was held on April 22, 1970 with the idea of utilizing education and outreach to help change people's attitudes about the environment. This summit did a great job of emphasizing how this one idea has led to great strides in getting communities on board with protecting the valuable resources that they utilize everyday whether for work, pleasure, or simply living a healthy life.