Meeting for BLM Lands in the San Juan Archipelago

Saturday, February 18, 10:30 a.m., Anacortes Senior Center

The lighthouse on BLM-managed Patos Island. Photo by Tom Reeve

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Senator Maria Cantwell will hold a public meeting to discuss progress made so far in our efforts to secure permanent protection for Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands in the San Juan Archipelago. Senator Cantwell will discuss legislation introduced this past September to establish the San Juan Islands National Conservation Area. The public is welcome to attend.

Anacortes Senior Center – Great Room is located at 1701 22nd Street, Anacortes. RSVP to DOI_Events@ios.doi.gov by 12 pm, Friday, February 17.

Some background on the effort:

In the late 1980s a group of Lopez Island residents formed the Friends of Chadwick Hill to prevent the logging of a local landmark which ultimately led to the protection of Chadwick Hill and Watmough Bay.

The effort also built a long and supportive relationship with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which manages about 1,000 acres spread across the San Juan Islands. BLM currently manages 450 acres of its lands in the San Juans as Areas of Critical Environmental Concern. These lands are not currently threatened but are not under permanent protection. A few other sites are co-managed with Washington State Parks, but the remaining acreage currently has no specific planning or protection.

Lopez residents Asha Lela, Cynthia Dilling, Bob Myhr and other original members of the Friends of Chadwick joined with new supporters to form Islanders for the National Conservation Area. They spent the last three years striving to make the protection of the BLM lands in the San Juans permanent by having these lands officially designated and managed as Conservation Lands at BLM through congressional legislation.

Asha and her fellow committee members participated in public events like the County Fair and Farmers Markets gathering endorsements for protection. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Senator Maria Cantwell and Congressman Rick Larsen have held local listening sessions to discuss the community’s goals. Efforts reached a major milestone in September when Representative Larsen and Senator Cantwell introduced bills in Congress to officially designate the BLM lands in the islands as the San Juan Islands National Conservation Area.

That legislation requires the BLM to manage its lands for conservation and recreation and directs the BLM to work closely with the community to build a management plan for those lands. The legislation doesn’t call for any additional acquisition of land and explicitly limits its impact to land owned by the BLM, with no impact on surrounding private lands.

Those bills are now awaiting action in Congress. Many local individuals and groups have sent letters to Washington, D.C. supporting Representative Larsen’s call for a hearing on the bill in the House Natural Resources Committee. Senator Cantwell is working to schedule a hearing in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Interior Secretary Salazar, who spoke with supporters last spring, included the San Juan Islands National Conservation Area in his list of 18 “crown jewel” conservation priorities for Congress to pass.

While the committee is pleased with our delegation’s support of the bills, getting the legislation passed into law will be challenging in the current congressional climate.

Asha Lela and other supporters are going to the other Washington in March. They plan to meet with congressional staff and officials at the BLM to help move things forward on the Conservation Lands designation. The contingent will push to ensure that political stalemates on other issues don’t get in the way of the San Juan Islands’ needs. The group is very clear on the goal they are pursuing – “permanent community-driven protection for the BLM lands in the San Juans.”

And the other Washington is coming to us this Saturday for a public meeting. We encourage islanders to attend the meeting and voice support for permanently protecting the BLM lands in the San Juans.

For more information on the San Juan Islands National Conservation Area effort, including maps of the BLM lands and the text of the legislation, visit www.SanJuanIslandsNCA.org.