Leap of faith - protecting the Sammamish River

The race to save the environment is lined with big hurdles, including working with unlikely partners. These tree planters have good track records.

CROSSING THE LINE: THE SAMMAMISH WATERSHED FORUM

For thousands of years the crystal clear waters of the Sammamish River were a cultural, economic, and social focus for western Washington state. A dense riparian forest sheltered the river's 54 meandering miles, cooling waters and protecting spawning salmon from lethally high temperatures. Along the river precious wetland supported a peaty, swamp-like soil, ideal for agriculture.

But all that changed in the 1960s when an Army Corps of Engineers flood-control project virtually eliminated the river's natural habitat. The dredging, straightening, and narrowing that ensued - and the accompanying land changes - lessened springtime flooding but reduced the Sammamish River to a mere 14 miles, leading to major declines in its fish populations and degrading its water quality.

The riverbanks, no longer populated with trees, became overrun with nonnatives such as Himalayan blackberry and reed canart grass. The growth of several large towns - Redmond, Woodinville, and Bothell - during the 1980s and 1990s further taxed the river's resources.

As the Sammamish grew stressed, the question arose: How best to protect both the river's needs and those of the surrounding municipalities?

A group of concerned officials in King County answered that question with one word: cooperation. That potent ingredient led the area's major cities to look beyond their differences and focus on a common goal: the health of the watershed.

This new attitude was spurred by a 1994 regional needs assessment (RNA) that confirmed their fears about the river's health. And as the only annual migration route for up to 70,000 salmon, the Sammamish's health is of concern at the federal level as well. The National Marine Fisheries Service is considering chinook for an endangered species listing in 1999.

Enter the Sammamish Watershed Forum, funded by the county and localities and comprised of elected officials from cities in the watershed and King and Snohomish counties. The Forum was given a mandate to create a 20-year plan for the watershed, locate funding, and recommend policies, projects, and programs.

The down-and-dirty work was done at the community level, supported by staff from the natural resource-related branches of government. Staff members quickly discovered they had more similarities than differences.

"We found out that everybody had the same interests, although people came at them in different ways," says coordinator Doug Osterman.

Most important, he says, was the realization that cities needed to pool their fundraising resources to implement programs such as tree planting. "This process has allowed us to focus on the priorities so we aren't competing against each other for the same funding sources. The Forum's broadened people's perspective."

Still, the early days were not easy ones. "The county was seen as this 800-pound gorilla" overseeing what municipalities were doing, says Osterman. Battling that stereotype was difficult, but a leap of faith and constant communication helped bring people together. The bottom line, says Osterman, was the realization that "everybody was doing good work at the local level, but the environment doesn't follow jurisdictional boundaries. We needed to work on a regional level, too."

This year AMERICAN FORESTS' urban Global ReLeaf Fund and corporate partner Eddie Bauer supported the Sammamish Watershed Forum's planting of 13,000 native trees and shrubs at four sites along the Sammamish River. The planting on October 24 drew about 1,000 volunteers.

The combination of community, business, and nonprofit expertise is part of what makes the Sammamish's future so bright. "The AMERICAN FORESTS and Eddie Bauer partnership allowed us to expand the scope of our project and restore much more than we would have," says Sammamish ReLeaf coordinator Jennifer Rice. "But it also helps to get the word out that these are important projects and that local communities can do something to improve the environment in their region by partnering with organizations with different resources and expertise."

RIVERS TO FORD: THE LOWER RIO GRANDE VALLEY NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE

Once jaguars sharpened their claws on a multitude of shoreline trees at this Global ReLeaf Forest site along the Rio Grande at the far southern tip of Texas.

Today jaguars have gone the way of an estimated 95 percent of that region's subtropical habitat, lost in settlers efforts to clear land for cotton, citrus, and other crops. As the trees and other plants that supported the diverse wildlife disappeared, the remaining forests became fragmented, creating a patchwork of trees incapable of supporting indigenous animals, plants, and birds.

For those reasons Congress in 1979 established the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge near Alamo, Texas. More than halfway to acquiring its congressionally mandated goal of 132,500 acres, the refuge is intended as the core of a wildlife corridor that will support some of the rarest species in the world, including the endangered ocelot and jaguarundi, red-crowned parrot and chachalaca, Texas ebony trees, and Indigo snakes.