Friends of Dungeness Wildlife Refuge and Commercial Aquaculture

Friends of Dungeness Wildlife Refuge

on the proposed commercial shellfish operation

within the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge

The Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge

Commercial Oyster Farm Proposed Within Refuge

The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe has done many positive things for our community. They have worked with Friends and the Refuge for environmental restoration and other beneficial projects. We support their commercial aquaculture efforts. However, we do object to the proposed location within a closed area of the Refuge that is heavily used by wildlife.

Our concerns about the proposed oyster farm location: 
• The Refuge was established in 1915 by President Woodrow Wilson to protect wildlife. It was not established to conduct commercial aquaculture operations with non-native species. If allowed, what precedent might this set for the future?

• The proposed location is a high use area for waterfowl and shorebirds, especially for winter foraging. The area also has eelgrass, which provides habitat for forage fish and shellfish.

• The level of proposed activity in this location would present a great disturbance to wildlife.

• The proposed location could negatively impact the view and experience of the 100,000 annual Refuge visitors with the visual pollution of up to 80,000 plastic mesh bags, and boats and workers in the area.

• Plastic debris from the mesh bags is a concern. Wildlife could potentially get trapped in the mesh or ingest the plastic debris as it breaks down.

• Bags anchored to the ground could prevent native eelgrass from growing and may disrupt natural habitat on the seabed, reducing foraging areas.

• Noise pollution from workers, boats, and equipment may scare wildlife, causing health issues, or abandonment of the site. Noise may also disturb Refuge visitors and neighbors on the bay.

You may submit comments to Clallam County. Click here to submit or read the Documents about the proposed oyster farm.

Click on the link above, then find several detailed documents regarding the proposal, exhibits, and public comments. On the top right of the page you will find links to submit a comment by email or fill out a an online form. Update – The scheduled April 4, 2019 public hearing has been postponed. The Tribe is seeking government to government negotiations regarding the proposed location. Public input is still being received by the County.

Industrial Aquaculture: Hear how the critical marine ecosystem is being put at risk by indusrial aquaculture.

CONTACT:         Darlene Schanfald, Vice-Chair

                           Sierra Club North Olympic Group

                             360-681-7565    darlenes@olympus.net

                            

INDUSTRIAL AQUACULTURE

FOOD or FOLLY?   LOSING THE WILD?

Saturday    13 October 2018     3–5 PM

Historic Dungeness Schoolhouse 

2781 Towne Rd, Just off E. Anderson Road

Sequim, WA

 The Sierra Club’s North Olympic Group and the Sierra Club ChapterWater Salmon Committee invites the public to join them for this important forum about how our oceans are being commercialized for the few and the losses that follow.

We are pleased to have the following speakers present their work from years of experience.

  

Kurt Beardslee, Executive Director, Wild Fish Conservancy (WFC)  

The Success of the Our Sound, Our Salmon Campaign: Phasing Out Atlantic Salmon Aquaculture in Puget Sound. 

Kurt Beardslee is the executive director and co-founder of the Wild Fish Conservancy. For over a decade Kurt and his science staff have investigated the substantial risk open-water Atlantic salmon aquaculture places on the Pacific Northwest’s wild salmon.

In spring of 2017, WFC launched the Our Sound,Our Salmon (OSOS) campaign with the goal of phasing out Atlantic salmon net pens from Puget Sound.  The OSOS campaign was fundamental to the passage of Washington’s recent net pen legislation marking the largest legislative removal of Atlantic salmon net pens in the world.

Following the 2017 Cypress Island collapse of Cooke Aquaculture pens that released 260,000 penned Atlantic salmon into the wild, WFC staff collected tissue samples from the escapees for that revealed 100% positive test results for Piscine Reovirus (PRV), a highly contagious and debilitating salmonid disease. Genetic sequencing revealed the virus to be of Icelandic origin marking the first time this foreign strain of the virus was found in Pacific waters. 

In his talk, Kurt will discuss the numerous risks posed by farming Atlantic salmon in open-water net pens as well as potential land-based closed containment solutions for this industry. He will give a brief overview of WFC’s current litigation to hold Cooke Aquaculture accountable under the Clean Water Act for releasing 260,000 non-native Atlantic salmon into Puget Sound.  He will also discuss WFC’s ongoing Endangered Species Act (ESA) suit against the federal government for its failure to adequately protect ESA-listed species from the harm caused by industrial Atlantic salmon net pens.

Laura Hendricks, Founding Director Coalition To Protect Puget Sound Habitat.    Shellfish and Disappearing Beaches                                     

Over the last 11 years, Laura Hendricks’s Coalition has educated the public and regulators on shellfish aquaculture’s harm to WA State’s marine life. Hendricks represented citizens against the shellfish industry at a hearing before the Washington State Shorelines Hearings Board and won the case to protect eelgrass, a WA State Appeals Court precedent-setting case.

Hendricks will give an update about pending legal action by the Coalition to Protect Puget Sound Habitat, Protect Zangle Cove, and Wild Fish Conservancy filed against the WA Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW).  That suit demands an end to WDFW’s exemption of industrial shellfish aquaculture projects from Hydraulic Project Approvals (HPA).  HPAs are state standards designed and required to protect fish and marine habitats. 

“With threatened Southern Resident killer whales and endangered native salmon at extreme risk, our state agencies have failed to implement the environmental protections that are critical to the broad scale ecological recovery of Puget Sound,” says Patrick Townsend, president of Protect Zangle Cove. “The action we are taking today is one important step toward restoring sanity to the recovery process. We must protect the tidelands from further loss of ecological function or we will see the loss of iconic species so important to the people of Washington State.” 

  

Alfredo Quarto, Co-director and Co-founder of Mangrove Action Project (MAP)

Question Your Shrimp, A consumer Awareness Campaign

For twenty-five years, Alfredo Quarto has worked with indigenous cultures around the world helping them restore their mangrove forests and way of life, prior to corporations having destroyed their ecosystems to industrialize the raising of shrimp. He will have a short video about these villages and mangrove trees.

Quarto is a veteran campaigner with over 40 years of experience in organizing and writing on the environment and human rights issues.  Formerly an aerospace engineer, his experiences range over many countries and several environmental organizations, with a long-term focus on ocean issues, forestry, indigenous cultures, and human rights.  Prior to MAP, he was the executive director of the Ancient Forest Chautauqua, a multimedia traveling forum with events in 30 West Coast cities on behalf of old-growth forests and indigenous dwellers.

Anne Mosness, Go Wild Campaign                                                           Current and Pending Efforts of the Federal Government to Raise Penned Fish

Anne Mosness has been tracking the federal NOAA Department of Commerce in its push to raise penned salmon in offshore waters, beyond jurisdictions and regulations of states.  She will speak on the current pending efforts, and losses, of such government efforts.  The public will hear about the recent Center for Food Safety legal win for fishing and public interest groups that challenged the Department of Commerce's rules permitting industrial aquaculture offshore in U.S. federal waters.

Anne Mosness is a fisherwoman that fished Copper River and Bristol Bay, Alaska for decades, a multi-general family profession.  She secured a position with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and founded the Go Wild Campaign. She has worked for several other national environmental and food organizations, received a fellowship from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, represented US fisheries at UN forums and Slow Food/Slow Fish conferences in Italy, and other global and national events focused on sustainable foods and fishing, seafood labeling, organic certification, marine ecosystem health. Anne has been a long time contributor to the Puget Consumer Coop’s Sound Consumer magazine.  Her latest article in the PCC magazine isentitled,  "Wild salmon, killerwhales and us" published July, 2018. 

  

Cosponsoring the event are Friends of Miller Peninsula State Park, Olympic Environmental Coalition, Olympic Forest Coalition. and Protect Peninsula’s Future.

The October 13 event is free.  Handouts from the sponsoring and presenting organizations will be available.  Coffee and tea will be served.  

Sierra Club Calls on Governor Inslee to Roll Back the Shellfish Initiative

Click here to join with the Sierra Club to tell Governor Inslee the shellfish initiative's transformation of Puget Sound's intertidal habitat area is not in the statewide interest. Get involved.  The shellfish industry is.

 

Speak up to Protect Shorelines and Wildlife

from Unlimited Expansion of Industrial Aquaculture

 

PVC pipes for geoducks shipped to China.

Plasticizing Puget Sound's intertidal area 

is not in the "state wide interest."

 

Join with the Sierra Club in calling on Governor Inslee to roll back the shellfish initiative before it results in the transformation of the intertidal habitat area into one populated with PVC pipes, grow-out bags and other structures used in the industrial production of shellfish. The shellfish initiative is not healthy for this fragile habitat area, unique to Puget Sound, and upon which a diversity of species depend on for survival.

Grow-out bags for non-native oysters.

Grow-out bags leave nothing

but scoured sediments when removed.

 

Get involved. The shellfish industry is generating millions of dollars in profits from growing geoducks shipped to China. They are using those profits for their attorneys, lobbyists and public relations firms to craft an image which will result in a permanent transformation of a habitat area unique to Washington's Puget Sound. It is what the Shoreline Management Act was intended to protect and is not in the statewide interest.

Governor Inslee and Taylor Shellfish

lobbyist Bill Dewey.

The things that money can buy.

 

 

Plastic pollution - Over 40,000 PVC pipes per acre are stomped into the beach for geoduck planting. 

 

I am the Puget Sound Videos

Oyster bags on the shoreline, Totten Inlet

A recap of the Oct. 30th meeting of the South Sound Sierra Club:
Guest speakers included:
* Sam Garst who educated us on the latest in Green Building Initiatives
* Ben Davenport from the National Sierra Club who encourages us to become involved. ...basically saying the Sierra Club is not here nor there, but right here....WE all are the Sierra Club and encouraged us to stay involved.
*Laura Hendricks updated us on the progress of meeting our goals in protecting the Puget Sound.

Thank you to the creators and performers of the The I AM PUGET SOUND videos

YouTube #1: I am the Puget Sound
YouTube #2: I am the Puget Sound Woven Web

Sierra Club asks Taylor Shellfish to drop legal threats

Photo: Taylor Shellfish geoduck farm on Totten Inlet on July 30, 2007.

In a letter dated 8/19/2010 to Interested Parties, Morgan Ahouse of the Sierra Club denies Taylor Shellfish accusations of "slander, defamation and wrongdoing" on the part of activist leader, Laura Hendricks, and urges Taylor to drop its legal threats.  Key points of the letter include:

"This letter is to inform you that the Sierra Club is continuing to actively pursue our campaign to protect shoreline and nearshore habitat from the impacts of industrial aquaculture operations in Puget Sound. The health of Puget Sound, salmon and the organisms living within the Sound is closely linked to the health and viability of the nearshore environment in which commercial aquaculture operations are conducted. We continue to advocate for better regulation of the shellfish aquaculture industry so that commercial shellfish aquaculture operations are consistent with maintenance and preservation of Puget Sound nearshore habitat functions. The following specific goals are key to achieving more environmentally benign operations of shellfish aquaculture while we support recovery efforts:

"--Stop removal/destruction of native species and marine vegetation from our nearshore environment.
--Stop the introduction of plastics/PVC into our marine waters.
--Stop locating geoduck and oyster bag aquaculture in the nearshore.
--Stop the spraying of carbaryl and pesticides in the shoreline environment.
--Stop the permitting of large-scale aquaculture rafts in the subtidal zone.

"You may be aware that the Sierra Club received legal notice alleging that Sierra Club activists engaged in slander, defamation and wrong-doing. Our attorneys have thoroughly evaluated the allegations levied by Taylor Shellfish, and we have determined that neither Laura Hendricks nor any other Sierra Club activists have defamed or slandered Taylor Shellfish/industry or engaged in illegal or improper activities. Again, protection of the shoreline environment from impacts due to commercial aquaculture practices is a high priority for the Sierra Club and our activists. We appreciate the leadership role that Laura Hendricks has played in representing the Sierra Club on this issue. We recognize that our work and Laura Hendricks’ representation of our position have increased the public perception regarding the need for better regulations governing shellfish aquaculture practices, which may not be welcomed by the aquaculture industry. We have urged Taylor Shellfish to drop its legal threats."

Read the full text of the letter.