Patience and Persistence Rewarded on Fidalgo Bay

Critical estuarine habitat along Puget Sound is protected, thanks to the unflagging efforts of Skagit Land Trust and committed stakeholders.

In 2006, Martha Bray, the conservation director for Skagit Land Trust in Skagit County, Washington, celebrated the permanent protection and transfer to public ownership of more than 530 acres located in the intertidal lands of south Fidalgo Bay in Washington State. It was a gratifying achievement, seven years in the making and brought about through the demanding work of uniting stakeholders, navigating bureaucracies, and focusing on goals rather than setbacks.

View of Fidalgo Bay from the north showing March’s Point to the east (left) and Fidalgo Island to the west (right) with Skagit Bay shown in the distance. Most of the bay to the south of the railroad trestle (center) is protected by the conservation easement, along with some tracts on the northeast side of the bay.

By the mid 20th century, the tidelands and estuarine habitat of Fidalgo Bay, located in Puget Sound, were vanishing resources. Close to a century ago, enormous tracts of natural tidelands and estuarine wetlands began to disappear in and around Puget Sound due to drainage and development for industrial, residential, and agricultural uses. Damage to the marine environments in south Fidalgo Bay intensified in the early 1990s, when a series of oil spills harmed critical habitat.

“Fidalgo Bay is right at the northern end of Puget Sound, an area that supports a complicated web of life,” says Bray. The mudflats and eelgrass beds of Fidalgo Bay nurture forage fish such as Pacific herring, surf smelt, and Pacific sand lance, as well as juvenile salmon and Dungeness crab.

“Forage fish are at the bottom of the food chain,” says Bray. “They breed in the intertidal areas and live within the rich habitat of eelgrass beds, so protecting the intertidal zone and eelgrass beds is vital. This area is also feeding habitat for bald eagles and a very large nearby colony of nesting great blue heron,” she adds.

Companies held responsible for the oil spills were required to pay settlements to mitigate the aquatic resource damage. Skagit Land Trust’s 1999 land purchase of 450 acres in south Fidalgo Bay was made possible via one such settlement that was funded and administered through the Washington State Coastal Protection Fund (CPF).

Skagit Land Trust’s decision to protect this land was driven by a sense of urgency. “A local developer had approached the landowners with a proposal to purchase the properties for an eelgrass mitigation site, which would have been an entrepreneurial venture to provide developers with mitigation credits if their project destroyed eelgrass,” says Bray. “The problem with this concept was that there was no scientific evidence proving eelgrass beds could be restored effectively. Fortunately, we had a board member who had a personal relationship with the landowners—he was key in getting them to consider conservation and in negotiating the sale.”

Before the purchase was finalized, stakeholders had to reach an important consensus—deciding which agency could be trusted to restore and protect the acquired lands.

“From the beginning, we felt it was important to return the lands to public ownership. The Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) manages the state’s aquatic resources and was obviously the right landowner, but some stakeholders were uncomfortable with the agency’s dual roles—DNR manages natural areas and also generates revenue through commercial leasing of state aquatic lands,” notes Bray.

To address this concern, the land trust and the committee overseeing the CPF funds stipulated that property acquired in Fidalgo Bay must be placed in a conservation easement before land-management duties were transferred to DNR.

“Taking this step was essential in getting stakeholders to come together on the purchase, because it ensured that the land could not be developed for a different purpose later on,” says Bray. “This agreement was a first for the state of Washington, which had never before consented to accept property that was encumbered by a conservation easement held by a local organization. DNR’s willingness to accept the first conservation easement in 1999 was due in no small part to the support of the Washington State Commissioner of Public Lands at the time.”

Holding the vision
The land trust accomplished a second Fidalgo Bay land purchase in 2006, achieved through a lengthy and challenging process.

View of Fidalgo Bay from the south showing the refinery on March’s Point to the west (right) and Guemes and Cypress Islands in the distance.

The complexity lay in the number and diversity of members on the Texaco Trustee Restoration Committee (TRC), the entity that Skagit Land Trust hoped would fund the land purchase using oil-spill settlement money. This committee was composed of representatives from a federal agency, three state agencies, and four Native American tribal governments, all of whom had to reach consensus before the acquisitions were funded.

Among the challenges overcome was a scarcity of willing sellers. The tracts remaining in private ownership were held by relatively few landowners. “Cold-calling landowners to drum up conservation sales is a tough way to close deals, especially when the appraised fair market value of these properties tends to be low compared to the speculative values envisioned by some of the landowners” explains Bray. “As tidelands, without boundary surveys or clear legal descriptions, these properties also tended to have very complicated title issues that had to be resolved before the state would accept ownership,” she adds.

“There are a lot of political and technical issues to address when attempting to buy back tidelands in urbanized estuaries such as Fidalgo Bay,” says Dan Doty, who works for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and serves as the chairperson on the TRC.
“I was amazed by the time and complexity that went into making these land purchases happen.

Map that shows the easement boundaries and the two phases of protection.

“Martha Bray did a great job navigating the political process and communicating with tribal interests, state and federal agencies, the port, city government, and others. Those of us involved in this acquisition had to work through a variety of complications, delays, and setbacks,” notes Doty.

Fortunately for the bay and its stakeholders, Skagit Land Trust did secure a contract to purchase 82.2 acres, the largest remaining privately owned tract in south Fidalgo Bay, and the TRC reached a consensus to fund this acquisition in 2006. “Keeping the seller on board through that long agency process was, at times, very challenging,” says Bray, who remembered the numerous contract extensions needed on the purchase and sale agreement. “But our work is all about building good relationships with the sellers, and we were fortunate that they stayed with us.”

Stakeholders received another encouraging sign when DNR proposed south Fidalgo Bay as an aquatic reserve. Although the proposal must still undergo a public review process, it bodes well for the easement lands and surrounding areas.

“Buying land for conservation and protection of natural resources in urbanized estuaries takes a lot of patience,” says Doty, “Political climates can change and regulations can change, but the conservation easements will remain, so it’s time and money well spent. Skagit Land Trust played a key role in helping to conserve and protect over 530 acres of critical tideland habitats, and they should be commended for their efforts.”