Statement before the City of Bainbridge Island Hearing Examiner, June 25, 2009, concerning the City's proposed Strawberry Cannery Park Project:
My name is Conrad Mahnken. I am a 40 year resident of Bainbridge Island. I am a retired NOAA fisheries biologist. At my retirement, I was director of the NOAA Manchester (Fisheries) Laboratory and the NOAA National Aquaculture Matrix manager at the time. I presently serve as a Commissioner on the State Fish & Wildlife Commission.
I am not here today to argue the general benefits of marine and estuarine habitat restoration as I believe that habitat restoration in Puget Sound basin is vital to the recovery of the Puget Sound ecosystem especially for the recovery of our ESA (Endangered Species Act) listed salmon and steelhead that depend upon a healthy marine environment as they migrate out of the rivers to open water and Puget Sound.
In terms of priority and where we should be investing our limited resources, I've always been an advocate of securing large intact parcels of still relatively good quality habitat before addressing small, human-altered, parcels of isolated habitat such as the one before you today.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has accrued nearly a million acres of fish and wildlife habitat. The department has been very successful in a variety of competitive processes in securing grants for the purchase of lands and has worked cooperatively with NGO's and state and federal partners.
The general approach here is to identify habitat based on habitat values that may include such measures as biodiversity, rarity of species and whether they are listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. What is the community structure and minimum viable populations? And most importantly in my mind, whether the land is connected to other valuable habitat. Is the habitat fragmented?
My sense is that this is in fact a piece of fragmented habitat which leads me to question whether the City of Bainbridge Island has developed an overall habitat restoration plan for an urbanized Eagle Harbor and how this project fits into such a plan. In other words, I wonder whether this very small restoration project has scientific merit in a context of overall restoration of Eagle Harbor. And again, I emphasize that I am an advocate of large wholistic approaches to habitat restoration.
Other questions include:
What is the track record for small shoreline recovery efforts such as this proposed here?
What will be the measurable outcomes in terms of expected results and benefits in so far as the intended use of the site is primarily a park for the people of Bainbridge?
Will the benefits of a refurbished habitat help or hinder human access to the park?
How will they be worked together?
And how will we know when the project is biologically successful?
Has a baseline inventory been established that will allow later comparisons of before and after habitat quality?
And last but not least, has the project as written by the consultants been peer reviewed?
I realize that the process has included National and State Environmental Policy Act processes and that those have been completed. But my sense is that the project is designed primarily as a convenient off-site mitigation habitat recovery project for NOAA with too little regard to be user friendly to the people of Bainbridge.
It is difficult for me to give a high priority to such a limited but expensive project in the midst of an urban bay when so many other significant environmental issues go wanting.
In closing, I would like to state for the record once again that habitat recovery is a founding principle of the stewardship role of NOAA and has been supported by myself throughout my career as a federal scientist. Furthermore, the City of Bainbridge has been a leader in habitat conservation and recovery both terrestrial and aquatic and Peter Best in particular needs to be singled out for his efforts in this respect.
But with all due respect, I really wonder whether this project truly meets NOAA's federal responsibilities or the needs of the people of Bainbridge Island for that matter.