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Participating Organizations: In Washington State: People for Puget Sound, Evergreen Islands, Friends of the San Juans, Washington Scuba Alliance, Waldron Island Community. In British Columbia: Georgia Strait Alliance, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Galiano Conservancy Association, Living Oceans Society, Marine Life Sanctuaries Society, Mayne Island Naturalists, Oceans Blue Foundation, SPEC
Geographic location of the project
People for Puget Sound and Georgia Strait Alliance, with the above partners, have proposed to establish a marine protected area in the U.S.-Canada transboundary region including and adjoining Boundary Pass. (See enclosed maps). The are has been dubbed the Orca Pass International Stewardship Area (after the orcas that transit these waters regularly). The current configuration of the Orca Pass International Stewardship Area is found at www.pugetsound.org/mpa
Problem Statement
The Puget Sound/Georgia Basin is an unusually productive marine nursery area with a variety of estuarine habitats that support unparalleled biodiversity. This fragile transboundary ecosystem is also in jeopardy. A combination of poor harvest management, habitat disturbance and destruction, pollution, and altered predator-prey dynamics are to blame. An international scientific panel investigating the shared waters reported in 1994 their urgent concern about the decline in marine fishes and the irreversible losses of nearshore and estuarine habitats. Many Pacific salmon runs are now officially "threatened" under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, and with nearly every species of non-anadromous marine fish having plummeted to alarmingly low levels as well, commercial fisheries have nearly disappeared and recreational fishing is increasingly curtailed. In the face of this crisis, the strongest recommendation of marine scientists is to establish MPAs. While governments are moving in the right direction on each side of the border, it will take community-level citizen involvement to expedite this process and achieve real progress--not only on each side of the border separately, but also together in the shared waters.
Project Description
In the fall of 1999, more than twenty citizen groups came together around the need to establish a protected area in the "transboundary" region of British Columbia and Washington State. We recognized that despite the political boundary, the "transboundary" waters between British Columbia and Washington State are really a single ecosystem. Orcas Pass International Stewardship Area was selected after GIS mapping of marine resources, consideration of constituent interests, and meetings on both sides of the boarder to look at how this citizens' initiative could compliment and enhance related efforts such as the Islands Trust/San Juan County marine protection initiative, the Northwest Straits Marine Conservation Initiative and the National Marine Conservation Area proposed by Parks Canada for southern Georgia Strait. With the help of Tribes and First Nations, other residents of the area, resources users and other groups, the level and type of protection needed in the area is now being defined.
Project Outcomes and Follow-up
In defining the Orca Pass International Stewardship Area, the transboundary marine protected area, we built broad support for its key objectives: Protect and restore important marine habitats with specific attention to reefs and intertidal and near-shore marine zones that benefit the widest diversity of species; Establish and monitor specific protected zones within the Area that are based on sound science and local/traditional knowledge, and measure and report on species health, abundance and diversity; Increase and sustain healthy populations of key species of fish, marine mammals, marine birds, marine plants, crustaceans, mollusks, and other invertebrates; Prevent land and water pollution by petroleum products, toxic chemicals, sewage, plastics and non-native plant and animal species. Central to our outreach and education campaign, was the production of the Orca Pass International Stewardship Area workbook (enclosed). Follow up activities for the project--an intensive community outreach and awareness campaign--will utilize the information contained in this document. For more information about the project, contact Mike Sato, North Sound Director, People for Puget Sound, (206) 382-7007.
People for Puget Sound
Seattle, Washington, United States
http://www.pugetsound.org/mpa/
For more information about this grant, please contact the CEC Secretariat.
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