Murrelet Survival Project Blog

Purchase a wreath or other product with Lynch Creek Farm using the above link and 20% of your purchase will benefit Murrelet Survival Project!  You can also make a direct donation, with 100% of all donation benefiting marbled murrelet protection efforts.   Lynch Creek Farm offers large, beautiful wreaths and free ground shipping anywhere in the contiguous United States.  Plus you can select your own desired delivery date so you can order today even if you don’t want your products shipped out for another few weeks!  

The panel event in Olympia was a success, with over 70 people in attendance and a fantastic conversation among the panel about the Trust Land Transfer and State Forest Replacement programs, the challenges and opportunities for getting these programs fully funded, and other grounds of common interest.  Several dozen members of the public asked to be kept informed about these programs and any advocacy opportunities for full program funding in the future.

The colored outline represents the land unique to each Alternative (plan) which could be protected as marbled murrelet habitat.  Which do you think would help the murrelet the most?  Click on a map to zoom in.  

However, after the marbled murrelet was listed as Threatened on the federal Endangered Species List in 1992 and after DNR signed a Habitat Conservation Plan agreement with US Fish & Wildlife Service in 1997, saving the marbled murrelet became DNR’s business, as the agreement permitted DNR to continue to log within the marbled murrelet’s range as long as DNR develop and then implement the necessary scientific knowledge about the marbled murrelet’s (previously unknown) ecological needs in order to create a Long-Term Conservation Strategy which would guide DNR’s forest management in the marbled murrelet’s range for the next 60-70 years.  7 years after this agreement was signed, in 2004, DNR commissioned a team of scientific all-stars, the top marbled murrelet researchers in the Pacific Northwest, to gather the data and recommend science-based actions to be included in the Long-Term Conservation Strategy.  The information and recommendations came out 4 years later, in what is known as the 2008 Science Report.  Although DNR praised the Science Report at the time, the Department has been distancing itself from the Science Report and its recommendations ever since due to a belief that the plan would forfeit too much timber revenue.  And now, in 2015, the process is finally moving forward once more into the final stages, the actual creation of the Long-Term Conservation Strategy (LTCS).  In the even more immediate future, the Alternatives, or options, for the LTCS are expected to be announced in October  There are 4 possible directions the LTCS could take, and Murrelet Survival Project and most conservation groups are advocating for one of those Alternatives, and ultimately the LTCS, to be based on the 2008 Science Report.   Yes, the Science Report is 7 years old now.  But that is largely due to the DNR’s negligence and other issues (DNR blames the recession), and there has not been any major research done on the marbled murrelet since then, and certainly not any specific to the potential recovery of the population in Washington state.  The Science Report was the most comprehensive and relevant report on the marbled murrelet when it was released in 2008, and it still is today, and even though 7 years have passed since the Science Report’s release, the fact that a third of Washington’s murrelet population has disappeared since then tells us that we need the conservation-minded, science-based approach the Science Report recommendations have to offer.  There are no other recommendations or science reports from top murrelet researchers on how DNR can contribute to the recovery of Washington’s marbled murrelet population, and as far as I know, the only scientists DNR and the Board hear from are on the DNR payroll (although several of their top researchers were on the Science Team behind the 2008 Science Report).  DNR claims to making its decisions based on sound science but we can clearly see the lack of recent research published by DNR on the marbled murrelet, and its own top scientists (at least in 2008) directly contributed to the Science Report.  The conservation community is willing to consider any science-based conservation strategy with recovery as the primary objective, but because there is no other comprehensive research to guide the LTCS and with a 5% annual population decline in our state, the Science Report is the only Alternative that can truly be based on sound science and therefore needs to become the Long-Term Conservation Strategy.

Campaign Coordinator

Our campaign was recently featured on King 5 News (NBC- Seattle)!

The Seattle Times’ recent coverage of Murrelet Survival Project and our effort to protect the marbled murrelet

In case you missed it live, here is campaign coordinator Kevin Schmelzlen’s interview with KOMO Radio