Often when you see people giving donations to plant trees, or saving a forest sometimes it’s never really as close or as significant when it’s right in your own backyard. This is the case with Trillium Forest located on Whidbey Island in Washington. The 664-acre property is the largest piece of privately owned property in Island County. Before it went into foreclosure it was originally divided into 124 plots and approved for development. This property is literally less than 3 miles from where my husband and I are in Greenbank, and just north of Freeland. In a rural setting, this is your backyard.

A nine-inch Northwestern Salamander on a Red Alder log. Whidbey Is. Photo by Robert J. Pennington.

Earlier this year the Whidbey Camano Land Trust was given the option to purchase the property and raise $4.2 Million. If successful, the WCLT would work to turn it back into recreational trails for hikers, birders, horseback riders, etc., and help restore the health and wildlife of a forest that had been logged back in 1988.

If the funds cannot be raised, the property will be divided and sold privately. Originally the Land Trust had until June 10th to raise the funds. As luck would have it they received an extension until September 10th.

So here we are on September 1st, just ten days away and I feel like I’m watching a horse race between thousands of people trying to save a forest and a financial institution. (I promised myself, I wouldn’t go there). Because I am familiar with the work the Whidbey Camano Land Trust does, it boggles my mind to see them spearhead what would seemingly be an impossible mission. As of this writing they need just $900,000. $300,000 has already been promised, leaving $600,000 left. From their newsletter posting today, “To help raise the remaining $600,000, an existing donor has made a pledge to match, dollar for dollar, the first person to donate $100,000 between now and September 10. After the Land Trust raises $600,000, a second anonymous donor will contribute the remaining $300,000 needed to complete the campaign.” That’s not much considering where they started, but it’s a still a big stretch in 10 days.

Curled fern. Whidbey Is. Photo by Robert J. Pennington

While it does comes down to money, it’s about so much more than that. It’s about watching people from all over Island County and beyond, work together to save this giant piece of land. You cannot walk into a local store, cafe, or lumberyard without seeing donation jars with “Save the Forest Now” buttons and postcards on them. Hikers, joggers, birders, photographers, horseback riders, and other groups lead talks and rides through the property. Even small schoolchildren are not spared, helping raise funds and teaching people about why we need to Save the Forest Now.

If saved, I have no doubt this forest could become one of the best teaching grounds and case studies in the U.S., both environmentally and socially. It can even provide inspiration for more successful transactions while leaving an important legacy for generations to come. The reach of what happens in the next few days goes far beyond the waters around an island in Puget Sound. If it can happen here, the lessons learned can teach others everywhere not just how to save a piece of land against the odds and in a recession, but how to bring a much larger community together, regardless of politics, religion or economic status.

So now it’s down to the wire and I’ve got my money on “Trillium” comin’ up on the outside, yelling, “Go baby! Go!” A photo finish for the ages.

Offset your carbon footprint! Find out more about this property and how you can donate, check out the status on the Whidbey Camano Land Trust’s site: www.SaveTheForestNow.org

Or contact the WCLT at:

Whidbey Camano Land Trust
765 Wonn Road, Barn C-201
Greenbank, WA 98253

by Jen Pennington

photos by Robert J. Pennington

On a recent tour of the largest living green roof in North America atop the Vancouver, B.C. Convention Centre, one can’t help but be awed. The tour organized by Dow Chemical Company as part of Globe 2010 was a rare glimpse into the dichotomy of what you see vs. what you can’t see. Designed by LMN Architects, the building is the world’s first LEED Platinum convention center. It’s about taking in something visually and understanding at a deeper level that natural beauty and the creation of new wildlife habitats in urban settings can successfully coexist with the right mix of landscape architecture, engineering, and construction. The fact that one can easily take for granted the man-made materials underneath an organic surface is a testament to its success.

Brilliantly colored sedums looking towards the water

As you step out the doors onto the first level, one is struck by the brilliant red, orange and pink beauty of native sedums blooming in spring amidst a precisely placed irrigation system. Bruce Hemstock, Landscape Architect for PWL Partnership explains that the irrigation system utilizes black water from the convention center and desalination machinery to water the plants making it a very sustainable system. The vast expanse of this orderly growth is amazing and you can’t even see the grasses above yet. Walking along the sloped path that leads to the green areas of the main roofs, one passes by the apiary of bees that help pollinate the area. As you step up to the grassy rise of the roof you are instantly transported to a park in the sky. It is so large at six acres that you never feel as if you are on an actual roof, and therein is the real beauty of it. Now in its second year of growth, the illusion is so surreal in an urban environment that it’s easy to disregard what lies beneath the top layer.

Roof layers and substrate display at Dow's both at Globe 2010.

Digging down into what makes the roof so unique is the fact that the layers that go into a normal roofing system are inverted. As Mike Kontranowski, the Strategic Market Director, Architectural Markets for Dow Building Solutions explains, “It’s turning the roof upside down.” In this case, 2.5 million board feet of Styrofoam™ brand insulation and more than 500,000 board feet of Styrofoam™ Highload insulation from Dow sits directly on top of the roof. On top of that lies a series of other substrates, and protective barriers before the placement of soil and the thousands of indigenous plants and that grow there. With the addition of all these materials, the lightest weight component, keeping the roof thermally stable, reducing weight load,  and enhancing energy efficiency at the base is the Styrofoam™. A dimpled water barrier on top of that prevents water from seeping through and also holds droplets of water to retain moisture in the soil.

The roof is truly inspiring with its many levels of beauty and sustainable attributes. As green roofs become more popular in cities, my hope is that those in the design, building and materials industries share this knowledge readily. Not just amongst the largest architecture firms and contractors but down to the small business levels of builders and designers in outlying areas or smaller cities where adoption is slower to manifest. If we are truly concerned about creating eco communities and championing environmental and energy efficiency benefits, the challenge for all is how to inspire change broadly while making it affordable to install in the first place.

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All photos copyright 2010 Robert J. Pennington.

Last Thursday, January 21st, a panel of business leaders spoke at Antioch University to a full room of entrepreneurs, students, faculty and members of the business community. Each gave a great presentation on how their company is working to create social and environmental benefits through innovative practices.

NBIS presented the program as part of Antioch University’s Center for Creative Change series on Global Issues and Perspectives. Karl Ostrom, Co-director of the Network for Business Innovation and Sustainability (NBIS) moderated the discussion with Seattle-based executives from a variety of businesses with global footprints.

David Basson, CEO of Greensource Organic Clothing

Valerie Bone, Director of Quality/Corporate Social Responsibility, PMI

David Okrent, Brand Director for Environment for Boeing Commercial Airplanes

Dennis Gawlik, Faculty Member at Bainbridge Graduate Institute and Director of Purchasing Services for the University of Washington

After the presentations the panel joined in a discussion on what sustainability means to each of them. Questions were taken from an enthusiastic audience, and Antioch was pleased to see so many people stick around afterwards to converse with the speakers. It just makes you realize it’s how we harness people energy that will make the business world a better place.

Shoes crunch in the gravel as Harry Case and his grandson Shawn Connor head up the forest road. A hairy woodpecker drums on a nearby Douglas fir, but Harry’s eye has landed on something else: alders sprouting in a strip of bare earth on the road shoulder.

He’s pleased, but points out, “I didn’t plant those.” Harry and his grandson did plant some 700 other trees they are babying in wire cages for deer protection. “Those alders are just coming in every place,” he says. “I won’t discourage them. They’ll be big trees in 40 years, which is good. Shawn will be 70,” he adds, throwing Shawn a deadpan glance.

“We used to call alder a weed tree. Not any more. It’s used for furniture – fine furniture. Takes any kind of stain. It’s the only tree that is worth anything in the present market.”

Annette and Harry Case with Harry's grandson, Shawn Connor

Harry has stewarded these woods for 62 years, selectively logging and managing them for forest succession and diversity. He has strong feelings about the right way to do it, having gotten entangled as a young man in logging slash while hiking the Suiattle watershed in the Cascades. “I decided once and forever to obtain a piece of forest land never to be logged that way,” he says.

Harry was 18 when his dad came across this parcel near South Whidbey’s Saratoga Woods in a tax sale in 1946. “I bought it cheap,” he says. “You couldn’t buy it now, if you could find it.”

Harry and Annette are in the final stages of completing a conservation easement that will permanently protect the Incredible Forest, giving up development rights worth perhaps $1.5 million. Harry has harvested more than a million board feet of timber. “The Land Trust did a timber cruise and it turns out I have over five million now, so that’s what I call an increased yield. I have enough value in the timber. That’s what enables me to tie up the development rights. We’re never going to starve.”

Land Trust conservation partners and members already have contributed more than $40,000 of the estimated $60,000 needed to fund the transaction – for the timber cruise, fair market appraisal, land and wetland surveys, forest management plan, baseline survey, legal costs and staff time.

Pat Powell, Land Trust executive director, says the Case easement marks a big day for the Land Trust. “This is our biggest protection project of the year and the first conservation easement we have ever completed on a working forest.”

And she’s thrilled. “This will maintain and enhance the forest cover and promote species diversity by allowing the forest to grow to a mature condition with old-growth characteristics,” she said.
The easement also upholds Harry’s longstanding values and vision. “I’ve carefully done my own forestry work and it’s been a huge success,” he says. That may be an understatement from a man who was not trained as a forester but spent his career as a trombonist with the Seattle Symphony.

What was he thinking, this Seattle musician pursuing a secret life two days a week, camping, harvesting timber with a chain saw and planting his own trees?

“It’s really refreshing out here,” he says, watching a squirrel pilfer suet he’s hung on a nearby tree. “It’s quite complementary – coming here to get away from that high-pressure music. This is a different scene. I came here every time I could find two days to log.” Harry did all the stand improvement himself, carefully using a small tractor to tow out selected logs until the trees got too big for his equipment a few years ago.

The land has given Harry a good second income, peace of mind, physical exercise and a place to bond with his grandson as they observed the forest’s changes together. Shawn makes the point without even trying. “I was just eating a bunch of red huckleberries. What a great year. The red ones are about done but the evergreen huckleberries are just loaded.”

As a child Shawn joined his grandfather on trips to this forest and now is preparing to steward it into the future. He went from catching frogs and salamanders to an education in forest ecology at the University of Washington’s College of Forest Resources.

“This is like having your own garden to play in,” Shawn says. “You read things in books and then go out and apply them in the real world. Here you see the actual application – a unique experience.”

Along the way he became a teacher in some ways to his grandfather.

“There is an ecological crisis as we speak,” Harry says. “We are digging a grave for civilization with all this carbon dioxide in the air. I wasn’t thinking a whole lot about it until six or seven years ago when Shawn came home with the data.” One of Harry’s goals is to help offset the devastation of the world’s rain forests. Preserving trees is one way to practice carbon sequestration.

“There is a lot of carbon tied up in these trees. You wonder where a tree comes from? It takes carbon from the air. Trees are mostly coming out of the carbon in the air – an amazing process.” Shawn points out, “And oxygen is the byproduct.”

Harry adds, “If we are going to save the environment, little people are going to have to do something. The government isn’t going to do it; they’ve done zilch.”

He becomes emotional when he talks of the support Annette and Shawn have given him. “Annette, what are you doing?” he asks, summoning her from the RV he calls their portable cabin.

She’s smiling proudly. He gives her a big hug. Then another to Shawn.

“I want to say that Shawn and my wife have made it easy for me to do this. If they had not been on my side and seen my vision, I probably would not do the Land Trust thing. Shawn is going to forego 34 lots worth $100,000 apiece for saving the world. We’re going to try to save the world.”

“Starting with a postage stamp,” Annette adds. But then she notes that some other chunks of the South Whidbey forest are also protected by Land Trust efforts, and adds: “I like to see that on the map, see that it’s coming together almost all of a piece now.”

Harry is studying the ground at their feet, where last year they disturbed a small patch of earth to clear a pad for their RV. It’s a carpet of tiny alders.

“Well, there’s your lawn,” he declares with a smile.

Many thanks to The Whidbey Camano Land Trust for permission to reprint this article in Ecozome.

Harry Case, our local hero, is also one of five finalists for the Cox Conserves Heroes award! Vote for Harry before June 19th.

Car Wash Enterprises, Inc. commissioned a study to measure the potential impact of untreated car wash discharges into the stormwater system (and thereby to streams and lakes) using fish mortality as a measure.

Water from driveways, alleys, or fundraising car wash events typically runs down the street or parking lot and into the nearest storm drain. This wastewater, or effluent, may carry detergents, trace amounts of metals (copper from brake dust, zinc from tire wear, etc.), and small amounts of gasoline and diesel fuel, oil, grease and antifreeze. Detergents, including those that are biodegradable, can be harmful to fish by destroying their protective mucus membranes. In addition, detergents can damage fish gills and wash away natural oils that help fish absorb oxygen. Because it goes untreated into the nearest stream, this runoff has the potential to harm fish and other marine life in the streambed.

The fish toxicity tests were performed using a water runoff sample collected from a fundraising car wash event held in a parking lot and compared against a simulated runoff sample that was potable. The impact of chemicals in the car wash runoff was measured by assessing the mortality rate in juvenile Rainbow Trout. This was a practical way to show how harmful car wash runoff can be in our streams. These tests were termed “practical” fish toxicity tests because the runoff solutions were collected and prepared to represent the actual runoff water that would be expected to enter into the stormwater drains and eventually enter the streams and rivers of Puget Sound.

The car wash runoff sample caused 100 percent mortality of fish in all dilution steps tested, while all the fish survived in the potable water.

As a part of the study, calculations were performed for a hypothetical urban or suburban Puget Sound setting in which a small stream is subjected to car wash effluent via storm drains. Approximately 100,000 people were assumed to live in the watershed area. With only one percent of the cars washed in driveways on a typical summer weekend, the results showed that toxicity levels could easily meet or exceed the situations tested in the lab resulting in potential fish kills of 50 percent of a juvenile species.

The full fish toxicity study can be found at:
http://www.brownbear.com/pdf/FishToxicityTestReport2007.pdf

Car Wash Enterprises, Inc. dba Brown Bear Car Wash has also instituted a charity car wash program. The program provides non-profit groups an environmentally-safe alternative to driveway and parking lot car washing, as well as an effective method for fundraising.

Information about the Brown Bear Charity Car Wash Program can be found at:
http://www.brownbear.com/charity/

Stefan Kovalenko is the Community Affairs Coordinator / Project Specialist for Car Wash Enterprises, Inc.

In the early days of our working on our property we would come across the usual wildlife suspects, voles, frogs, deer, garter snakes, and the occasional rabbit. We could hear the coyotes at night howling and knew they were in the area. My husband Bob is like a magnet for animals. It’s pretty funny for a guy who is allergic to cats and dogs. Every time I moan about wanting a dog, he says, “honey, just think of the animals of the forests like they’re our outdoor pets.” Yeah…not buyin’ it, Bob.

Barred Owl

For a while there it was pretty gruesome. We would find various parts of small unrecognizable fuzzy parts in our paths. But nothing can prepare you for the cry of a 230 lb., 6’5” man screaming my name in the woods as if he has just chopped off his leg with a chainsaw. I came running only to find my husband with no blood on him anywhere but just this horrified look on his face. I was completely puzzled and then I saw what he had in his hands. He had accidentally stepped on a baby bunny that couldn’t have been more than a day old. He was holding it in his hands offering it to me like Lenny to George in John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.” It had a tiny spot of blood on it’s nose, and while I know full well you’re supposed to leave animals like this to nature, this was not nature’s fault, it was man’s. We also knew the mother was dead, found about twenty-five feet away with its head missing. We basically convinced ourselves we were its only hope, mostly to calm Bob down who was just beside himself with guilt.

Our neighbor helped us look up on the Internet what to do with a baby rabbit, and we learned we could feed it some kitten replacement milk. We also learned that you had to stimulate its anus with a Q-tip so it could pass a micropoop. Lovely. But the real irony was that we drove it seventy miles back to Seattle where I found a local vet who yelled at me and threatened to call the Fish & Game Warden. What’s that expression? Ah yes, no good deed goes unpunished. The gal behind the desk felt bad and gave me the name of the Sarvey Wildlife Center. Sarvey rehabilitates injured and orphaned wildlife in the Pacific Northwest. Animals receive immediate medical care, food, and shelter and stay until they are ready for release back into the wild.

It was getting harder to let go of little “Nettles,” as we named it. Its little ears had popped up and damn it was cute. It began drinking more milk and moving around. The next day Bob drove it North to Arlington. Another 100-mile trek (his penance for stepping on the thing). When he got there he told me it was like the land of misfit animals. An eagle with one wing, limping three-legged animals, a one-eyed bird and the like. He sat in the waiting room with a little kid who had a squirrel in a box. Bob handed Nettles off to a kind woman there and told her about how we found the mother. She immediately put it next to her skin where it could hear her heartbeat and said to us, you must have owls. They like the head. It has all the yummy parts. So after driving roughly 300 miles for this ordeal, and paying a fifty buck donation in our quest to save a little wildlife, the mildlife could also sleep that night. We’re not sure what happened after that, but we knew we did the best we could do.

Oddly enough the following weekend Bob was hooking up a water spigot with a long 100-foot garden hose. I was walking towards him when an enormous Barred Owl swooped down above his head within three feet of his bald spot. Bob didn’t even see him. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It then perched in a branch above his head and turned its head as if to say him, “Dude, you took my Scooby-snack.”