Floodplain development is contributing to the demise of Puget Sound orcas. Photo: Minette Layne/WikiMedia Commons

The Costs of Flooding

Since 1990, Puget Sound has been ravaged by 15 major flood disasters—that’s more than one every other year. As outlined in our new report, Changing Course: Why Protecting Floodplains is Good for People and Wildlife, thousands of homes have been damaged or destroyed and at least 58 people have died due to flooding. These floods cost taxpayers more than $1.37 billion in clean up and recovery costs.

Humans are not the only ones affected by floodplain development. Since 1900, Puget Sound Chinook salmon populations have declined 93% and nine runs of Chinook have gone extinct. Orca whales, which eat primarily salmon, have declined by half. Both are now under federal protection through the Endangered Species Act, but habitat and populations continue to decline.

Developing in Floodplains

Tolt River Road near Carnation, WA inundated by floodwaters. Photo: King County.

By filling floodplains and leveeing rivers, we’ve diminished the ability of the land to absorb large storms. More than 90% of our floodplains and wetlands have been lost to development, agriculture and other human activities. Of the floodplains that remain, more than 70% are in poor condition. The result is an increase in devastating flood damage, degradation of Puget Sound, and steep declines in fish and wildlife populations.

Solutions for Our Floodplains

As scientists consider how to address salmon declines and larger storms, they are coming to the conclusion that protecting and restoring floodplains is one of the most important things we can do to help salmon and orca while reducing risk for people.

The first step is to prevent more harmful development in flood-prone areas. In other words, we must stop making the problem worse. The second step is to fix our past mistakes by repairing already damaged floodplains. We can do this by buying out frequently flooded properties, setting back or removing levees to widen the river and floodplain, and restoring floodplains to recreate critical ecological functions.

So, is putting Puget Sound’s next million people in floodplains a good idea? So far, building in floodplains has been bad for people, bad for taxpayers, and bad for fish and wildlife. The question should not be, where are we going to put the next million people. The question should be, where are we going to put them, safely?

Finding a safe home for Puget Sound’s next million people will mean building smarter. Restoring and protecting our floodplains will mean that Puget Sound’s next generation will not just be safer from floods; they will also still be able to see salmon and orca leaping from our waters.

For more information, be sure to read our report: Changing Course: Why Protecting Floodplains is Good for People and Wildlife, and watch our video here.

Photo: Christopher Michel

Rich is heavily involved in the fight to stop five fast-moving coal export terminals in the Northwest, the largest of which is proposed to be built near Bellingham–just across the bay from his hometown of Anacortes.

About the projects, Rich says: “I don’t want to see the Northwest turned into ‘coal country’. The carbon from coal needs to stay in the ground. All the coal trains, ships, etc. will change the character of the Northwest.”

Protect Washington’s orcas from toxic coal–send a message to the Army Corps today.

We caught up with Rich to learn more about what compelled him to write his letter, and the many other ways he creates positive change for wildlife:

Photo: National Wildlife Federation

After seeing what development had done to other places, he starting becoming more involved in local groups like Friends of the Forest to protect the woods that he had spent so much time exploring as a child. With his help, Friends of the Forest and their partners were able to place conservation easements that will permanently protect nearly 1,800 acres of forest lands in Anacortes.

But that was just the beginning. Rich became a member of Evergreen Islands, a local citizen group that has, among other things, prevented a nuclear power plant proposal on a nearby island; the Anacortes Conservation Voters, which helps elect environmentally-friendly decision makers; and Transition Fidalgo & Friends, a group that is working to foster local resilience in response to climate change.

When asked what motivates him, he doesn’t skip a beat, saying: “My two grandchildren: four year old Marisol and two year old Azuul. I want them to experience a healthy natural world…I want to make a small difference. It’s much better than feeling discouraged, hopeless, and powerless by global warming or urban sprawl.”

Rich’s dedication to preserving habitat is evident in his work as a gardener and volunteer at three city parks to enhance their wildlife values by planting native plants. He helped start the Fidalgo Backyard Wildlife Habitat, because “it was a low-key, non-threatening, non adversarial way to foster habitat restoration one yard and project at a time”. In less than three years, Fidalgo Island earned the National Wildlife Federation certification of a Community Wildlife Habitat, and Rich was named “Community Volunteer of the Year” by NWF in 2009 for his enthusiastic and tireless team leadership.

As Rich explains, “What is good for wildlife is good for all of us.  We are all in this together.”

Letters to the Editor, Anacortes American

Words from a whale By Richard Bergner

This is the first time I’ve written to the editor. I’m an orca, a member of J pod here in the waters of the San Juans. You shouldn’t be surprised that orcas can write. After all, you land folks have determined that corporations are people and money is speech. Let me tell you in a nutshell (or seashell) a very scary tale that is not a fairy tale.

Some very wealthy coal, railroad and financial corporations are proposing to dig up coal in vast areas of Wyoming; dump the clumps into open rail cars; haul it all the way to this part of the Northwest in 1.5-mile-long, 125-unit trains; dump all that black grit onto giant coal piles at Cherry Point; and then load it into mammoth, three-football-field-long cargo ships bound for China, India and Korea to feed their industries to outcompete us.

I’m amazed at what you people will do to maintain your fossil fuel habit. I hear some people asking, “Why should I be concerned about coal trains rumbling through Mount Vernon and Burlington and a pile of coal at Cherry point?” Let me tell you.

The coal trains will impact my orca family in the San Juans. We eat salmon, salmon eat herring, and herring need eel grass. Cherry Point herring struggle to survive when eel grass is not healthy. If the whole marine system isn’t healthy, what will I eat? What do you think adding more coal dust, diesel particles and piers are going to do to the eel grass and herring runs of Cherry Point — a marine preserve, by the way? And how will ballast water, noise pollution, sonar, bilge water and ship exhaust emissions impact all us marine creatures in the San Juans? Our fins will flop, a sign of sickness.

I read (yes, I can read, too) that “if a ship is traveling at a speed of only 15 knots, there is a 79 percent chance of a collision being lethal to a whale.” I don’t like those odds. Bulk cargo ships, such as coal vessels, discharge a huge amount of ballast water, which typically contains a variety of biological materials, including plants, animals, viruses and bacteria. Noise pollution can cause me and my buddies to be disorientated, hinder communication and make it harder to find our food.

On a ship, oil often leaks from engine and machinery spaces and mixes with water in the bilge. Oil in even small concentrations can sicken or kill fish. The Evergreen State will become the Eversheen State. I don’t want to eat sick fish.

Do you think that I’m going to stick around here when I can’t eat, hear my buddies or swim in peaceful and clean waters? So when me and my orca friends leave for cleaner, quieter and safer waters (I hope we find some), will the tourist pamphlets and phone-book covers show pictures of giant cargo ships instead of members of my family jumping out of the water? Will the tourists come (if they can get here) to see 1.5-mile-long trains rumbling through the valley, or piles of coal, or giant cargo ships?

Coal terminal. Yes, our planet may be terminal all right if all that coal is burned, releasing all the carbon into the air.

So don’t think, Fidalgo Islanders, that this coal train and coal terminal doesn’t impact you. It will impact me, and that will impact you. We are all in this together, aren’t we?

The 120-day scoping process for the EIS (environmental impact statement) for the proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal and Custer Spur projects has started. Letters from whales aren’t accepted, so I’m counting on you to help.

Here’s how:

• Mail to: GPT/Custer Spur EIS c/o CH2M HILL, 1100 112th Ave. NE, Suite 400, Bellevue, WA 98004

• Email to: comments@eisgatewaypacificwa.gov

• Visit: www.eisgatewaypacificwa.gov

• Attend a scoping meeting Saturday, Nov. 3, in Friday Harbor, or Monday, Nov. 5 in Mount Vernon.

If you help me keep the Northwest from becoming the Eversheen State, I will tell my orca pals to join me in popping out of the water when you come to watch us.

PASCO, Washington — A railroad spokesman says about 30 cars of a 125-car coal train bound from Wyoming’s Powder River Basin to British Columbia have derailed along a route to the Columbia River Gorge in Mesa, Wash., blocking a main rail line.
…
[Gus Melonas of BNSF Railway Co.] says the majority of the derailed cars ended up on their sides and an undetermined amount of coal spilled. Melonas says no environmental threat was reported.

Wait. “No environmental threat was reported”? Let’s fix that. I want to report an environmental threat right now. Alert: Thirty rail cars filled with coal overturned and spilled their contents! Coal contains mercury, arsenic, and other toxic compounds that pose a serious threat to wildlife and human health. Mix in a couple gusts of wind and there’s your environmental threat right there.

Coal trains (like this one in Waterloo, Indiana in 2010) derail more often than you would think, and the consequences can be grim. (photo: Ray Steup)

When you consider that at least 19 coal trains have derailed since 2010 (expand the “Coal Dust” tab at this link for more info) it becomes pretty clear that this is a bad idea. And that’s before you consider all the other bad news that goes along with Big Coal’s projects: climate change, ocean acidification, impacts to endangered salmon and orcas…the list goes on.

The railroads and coal companies would love to sweep incidents like this under the rug, but it’s a lot harder than lifting up the corner of the landscape and getting out the broom. So next time you hear things like “no environmental threat,” you might want to ask who’s doing the reporting.

Help us stop Big Coal’s march through crucial ecosystems like the Columbia River and Puget Sound. Speak up now to protect Orcas and other wildlife in the Pacific Northwest!

At first the rains come as a light drizzle, tapping out a soothing melody on rooftops and windowpanes. Soon the tempo quickens to a loud drum beat of impending danger. As the rain falls harder and harder the river begins to swell, slowly creeping up its banks. Even the levees that have been constructed to shelter communities from floods are not immune to the growing threat and soon water begins to spill into the land around the river. At one point this land was left free for flooding but then people began to develop along the river. Levees were built and vegetation removed which destroyed the natural processes of the river. With out the natural protection offered from the floodplain the water begins to swirl into the basements and living rooms of the houses. Furniture, family heirlooms, floors and walls are submerged by the flood waters as the residents have to evacuate in a hurry.

This is a scene that is played out over and over again throughout the years and across watersheds. Many homes were insured through FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) which provides subsidized flood insurance for those living in floodplains. The insurance makes it possible for people to rebuild in the same location after a flood. These rebuilt homes only continue to put their owners in danger from floods and negatively impact salmon. As of 2011 Washington state has had 833 repeatedly flooded homes(those that have been flooded three times or more) and cost tax payers $71 million in insurance claims.

A Possible Way Out

When people are flooded out of their homes it takes an emotional and financial toll on the families, many of which were unaware of the extent of danger that living in these areas presents. The FEMA buy out program is a long and complex process that offers the possibility of moving people out of floodplains and restoring the floodplain, helping people and wildlife. This video shows firsthand accounts of flood victims’ experiences with flooding and using the buyout program.

Bad for People and Wildlife

Developing in floodplains puts people in danger and destroys critical habitat for endangered salmon runs in the Puget Sound region. It is for this reason that the National Wildlife Federation is involved in a lawsuit against FEMA. Under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) no federal agency can take actions that harm an ESA listed species. By promoting development in floodplains FEMA is violating the ESA and threatening endangered salmon runs and the orcas which rely on salmon for their primary food source.

Moving Forward

Instead of continuing to bail people out of flooded properties FEMA should make it easier for people to move out of the floodplain and to higher, safer ground. This is of particular importance in the face of Climate Change which will cause an increase in extreme events such as flooding. Properties that they do ensure should be safe for people and wildlife.

An Alaska brown bear with a trio of cubs. Proposed mining in Alaska's Bristol Bay watershed jeopardizes the habitat of such animals.

The 40,000-square-mile Bristol Bay region of southwest Alaska stretches across pristine tundra and wetlands crisscrossed with rivers that flow into the bay. Up to 40 million sockeye salmon return to this watershed each year—the world’s largest salmon run. In addition to sockeye, there are stunning runs of king salmon plus trophy rainbow trout and the full array of Alaskan wildlife, including grizzly bears, wolves, moose, caribou and waterfowl.

Here are eight things you probably don’t know about Bristol Bay:

1. Native People

For thousands of years, the Native people of Bristol Bay (Yup’ik-Eskimo, Aleut and Athabaskan) have subsisted on the bay’s natural resources. Salmon is the lifeblood of Native village economies and ways of life. In addition to salmon, Native communities in the bay area rely on berries, caribou, moose, marine mammals, ptarmigan, ducks, geese and many plants as their main sources of food. About 7,500 people live in the region, 66 percent of them Alaska Natives.

2. Visitor Attractions

Five national parks, wildlife refuges and designated wilderness areas lie within the Bristol Bay region along with a number of state parks and state wildlife protection areas. From hub communities, visitors can enjoy wildlife viewing, boating, rafting, fishing, hunting, traditional subsistence activities, air tours, hiking, camping, cannery tours, museum tours and historic sites.

3. The Importance of Fish

Commercial fishing and associated canneries have been the major industries in the area for years, accounting for nearly 75 percent of local jobs. Nearly a third of all Alaska’s salmon earnings come from Bristol Bay, which is home to rivers and streams that are as productive today as they were thousands of years ago. Sport anglers come from all over the world for that once-in-a-lifetime experience. In total, an estimated 37,000 fishing trips are taken yearly to Bristol Bay freshwater fisheries, contributing $60 million annually to the state.

4. Wildlife and Bristol Bay

The pristine lakes and rivers that empty into Bristol Bay support all five species of Pacific salmon—king, sockeye, silver, chum and pink—as well as rainbow trout, arctic char, grayling, northern pike, lake trout and Dolly Varden. The region also supports healthy populations of moose, sea otters, grizzly bears, black bears, seals, walruses, porcupines, river otters, beluga whales, orcas, caribou, wolves, bald eagles and one of only two known populations in the world of freshwater seals.

5. The Bad News

Plans for large-scale mineral development in the headwaters of the bay’s best wild salmon rivers—such as the proposed gold- and copper-mining development called Pebble Mine—jeopardize Bristol Bay’s wilderness qualities.

6. How Pebble Mine Threatens Wildlife

Foreign mining companies are eyeing gold and copper deposits under Bristol Bay’s unique watershed. If built, Pebble Mine, located in an unstable seismic zone prone to frequent earthquakes, would be the largest open-pit mine in North America, up to 2 miles wide. It would require:

• massive earthen dams to contain lakes of toxic mine waste t that could leak into surface waters and groundwater;
• a 100-mile-long road into wilderness habitat;
• a major new fossil-fuel power plant that would generate enough power to supply the city of Anchorage;
• and nearly 35 billion gallons of water each year, critically reducing flow to multiple salmon rivers.

Toxic by-products are an inevitable result of such open pit mines, putting salmon, which are highly sensitive to the slightest increases in certain metals such as copper, at great risk.

7. More Development on Public Lands in Bristol Bay

The proposed Pebble Mine is not the only threat to Bristol Bay wilderness, wildlife, and economics. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which administers federal public land in the area, has recommended opening more than 1 million acres of vital fish and wildlife habitat in the Bristol Bay watershed to future hard-rock mines like Pebble. These public, wild lands are integral to the health of Bristol Bay’s salmon-supporting waters. BLM must be persuaded to pursue a future for the region that supports the renewable natural resources of Bristol Bay over the short-term gains of mineral extraction.

8. What NWF Is Doing to Protect Bristol Bay

As wild salmon runs disappear across the planet, Bristol Bay remains a place of international significance, providing a refuge for salmon and the people and wildlife that depend on them. NWF is working with a growing coalition to stop the Pebble Mine and safeguard the irreplaceable resources of Bristol Bay. Native communities, sport and commercial anglers, conservation groups, and NWF’s Alaska affiliate—the Renewable Resources Coalition—are all working together toward this common vision:

• Prevent mining on Bristol Bay’s pristine federal lands and waters.
• Close loopholes in the Clean Water Act to ensure hardrock mines like Pebble are not permitted unless they can protect clean water.
• Support NWF’s Alaska affiliate, Renewable Resources Coalition, in the campaign to stop Pebble Mine and other hardrock-mining development on state lands.

How You Can Help

The pure waters and healthy habitats on which the grizzly bears of Alaska’s Bristol Bay depend could be devastated if mining interests get their way. Please donate today to protect wildlife in Bristol Bay and across America.

TAKE ACTION: Urge the Environmental Protection Agency to protect the wildlife of Bristol Bay against toxic mining.>>

More information

• Alaska Department of Fish and Game
• Our Bristol Bay
• Masterworks of Yupik Science and Survival
• Economic Significance of Sport Fishing in Alaska

But it is a perfect time to take a look and some of the things we’ve learned about sleep from studies of nonhuman animals:

Orcas: Those Wakeful Whales

Humans are born pretty helpless and apparently very tired, because newborns sleep around 12 hours a day. Why? To keep the body’s full attention on development and eventual mobility. But, the first months of life don’t work that way for all creatures. Consider orca, a.k.a. killer whale, calves. They start swimming at birth, and for the first month or so of their lives stay awake and on the move with hardly a break. All that activity helps them stay clear of predators and maintain their body temperature until their size and their blubbery insulation develop. Movement also keeps them breathing properly in a watery environment in which young calves can drown. 

Does Orca Sleep Differ from That of Humans?

You better believe it does! A lot. University of California–Los Angeles neuroscientist Jerome Siegel and post-doctorate fellow Oleg Lyamin have found that for the first month after giving birth, killer whale moms and their calves don’t get a wink of normal sleep, not ever, not at all. Adult orcas normally snooze 5 to 8 hours a night, closing both eyes and floating motionlessly. But for the first 30 days after a calf is born, forget about it, neither babe nor mom shut their eyes, and neither stops moving for more than a few minutes at a time, because new orca mothers must constantly beware of sharks and teach calves to breathe.

Missed Sleep: It Can Be a Killer

Going a month without sleep may be child’s play for an orca calf, but some animals die without proper sleep. Rodents and flies can die more quickly from lack of sleep than from lack of food. Two sleepless weeks can kill a lab rat. Siegel thinks that the amount of sleep an animal needs is dictated less by biological functions than by the animal’s environmental niche. The long night’s rest typical of bats, for example, helps the animals save energy. Siegel: “If a bat eats insects for only three hours in the evening, then maybe the best thing is to go hang in a cave upside down for the rest of the day.”

Different Sleep for Different Creatures

In case you haven’t noticed yet, sleep is not the same activity for one creature as it is for another. How peculiar is this: In dolphins, half the brain may rest while the other half stays wide awake; meanwhile, the dolphin carries on normal activities. Dolphins sleep literally with one eye closed—the eye shuts on the side of the body opposite the dozing brain hemisphere, since the right-brain hemisphere works the left eye and vice versa. Like killer whales, dolphin calves spend less than 1.5 percent of their time snoozing shortly after birth but gradually increase to 16 percent by three months.

It’s a Fact: We Need Shut Eye

For unknown reasons, closed eyes seem to be a prerequisite for most forms of sleep.

Why the Human Brain Needs Sleep

Neuroscientist Clifford Saper—a Harvard Medical School researcher who has studied a variety of species, including rats, mice, cats, monkeys and humans—says evidence suggests that sleep is no more effective for restoring tired muscles or any other body system than is a similar period of wakeful resting—except for one critical organ: the brain. The human brain apparently cannot do without sleep. Studies show that going too long without sleep makes memory, alertness, coordination and judgment decline. So if you are reading this late at night, go to bed!  The text will still be here in the morning.

Ponder This Risk of Missing Sleep

“If humans are deprived of sleep for long periods they lose motor, cognitive and memory function. The effect of 20 hours of wakefulness on driving is the equivalent of two shots of whiskey.”

– Harvard neuroscientist Clifford Saper

What Sleepless Species Teach Humans

Studies of creatures that normally undergo periods of sleeplessness may allow researchers to provide late-shift workers, military personnel, doctors and other assorted night owls with new methods for adapting to limited sleep without losing effectiveness. “We could live 20-hour lives instead of 12- or 14-hour lives,” says psychologist Verner Bingman of Ohio’s Bowling Green State University.

Bingman is studying Swainson’s thrushes, which during migrations between Canada and Peru go from a normal night’s sleep of 10 to 12 hours down to about 2.5 hours. To handle the energy output of the long migration they must nearly double the amount of fat in their bodies, switching from a diet of seeds to one of fruits and insects. This dietary change means they must search for food during the day and fly at night, which limits sack time. Bingman: “All of a sudden they are subject to an enormous amount of sleep deprivation.”

Bingman and doctoral student Thomas Fuchs have discovered that during morning and midday hours, the thrushes take as many as 50 micro naps per hour, most lasting about 10 to 20 seconds. Brain monitoring shows that these napping behaviors look very much like normal sleep. Bingman: “The trick would be to develop techniques or drugs that could recreate a similar brain pattern in humans.” 

[This text is adapted from a National Wildlife magazine story by Michael Tennesen, August/September 2007. You may want to read the full text.]

To make matters worse, prominent orca scientists agree that Puget Sound’s endangered orcas won’t recover without a lot more salmon to eat–and those salmon must come from the Columbia and Snake Rivers.

NWF is gathering as many messages from the general public during the federal comment period to help protect the iconic salmon of the Pacific Northwest and the orcas that depend upon them. The time is now for us to show NOAA and our elected leaders that wild salmon and orcas are national treasures that must be protected and restored.

If you can, please forward this link to friends or post it on your blog or website to help spark as many actions as possible!