Beyond 60: For a Healthy Puget Sound, Partnerships are Pivotal

They knew it was a long shot.

Yet Washington tribes, agricultural interests, environmental groups and local governments showed up in the state Capitol and spoke with one voice: The state, they told legislators, should invest $33 million to meet the needs of this diverse set of stakeholders. Their interests may vary, they noted, but they are connected by the floodplain where they live and work. Investing in a novel approach to collaboratively manage floodplains could protect communities and farms from flooding, sustain endangered salmon runs and create appealing places for people to enjoy the outdoors.

Lawmakers listened. In fact, they liked the idea so much that they allocated $44 million, a third more than requested. That 2013 funding launched the first suite of Floodplains by Design projects.

“We had all these different interests asking for the same thing,” said Bob Carey, The Nature Conservancy’s director of strategic partnerships. “That’s unique, and it opened some eyes. And getting more funds from the legislature than we requested? It’s unheard of!”

Since then, Floodplains by Design has won an additional $121 million in state funding for projects that have protected 38 communities and hundreds of residences, conserved 500 acres of farmland, and improved habitat for shellfish and salmon, among other benefits.

Aerial view of the Skagit River Delta where restoration projects have included Fisher Slough, Livingston Bay, and Fir Island Farm. Photo by Marlin Greene/One Earth Images.

“The way we manage our rivers has implications for farmers, tribes, conservationists, residents and civic leaders,” said Laura Blackmore, executive director of Puget Sound Partnership. “Floodplains by Design brings these interests together in a sophisticated and holistic approach that produces better outcomes for people and nature.” 

That partnership-driven approach has become increasingly critical to the Conservancy’s success as we’ve scaled up our ambitions over 60 years. From our scrappy beginnings preserving important but often isolated parcels of land, we’ve evolved to focus on restoring healthy ecosystems that sustain both wildlife and human well-being. Today, we have set our sights on conservation throughout the Puget Sound watershed, from its robust floodplains to vibrant cities. But we can’t achieve results on that scale on our own, or even by working only with other conservation interests.

In much of our work, this calls for creative collaborations:

• In upstream forests, we’ve brought together snowmobilers, hikers and outdoor enthusiasts to restore and reconnect forests.

• In the laboratories of Washington’s world-class universities, we’ve developed partnerships with scientists to answer pressing conservation questions.

• In urban landscapes, we’ve connected with communities to elevate local priorities and bring nature back.

“We learn as we pioneer new approaches. Then we find the path of least resistance and greatest impact,” said Jessie Israel, our WA director of Puget Sound conservation. “The power of our partnerships fuels this innovation, and collaboration is the key to a healthy, thriving Puget Sound.”

Conservation through Collaboration

One of the very first Floodplains by Design projects demonstrates how communities rally around projects with multiple benefits for people and nature.

In the fall of 2014, the city of Orting had just set back its levees on the Puyallup River when the largest flood in decades hit. Only a few years earlier, another large flood had forced one the largest evacuations in state history. This time, the river had enough room to spread out and absorb the downpour. The town was spared.

“The benefits to people are obvious and immediate: safety, community well-being, economic security,” Orting Mayor Joachim Pestinger wrote in a 2015 op-ed in the Seattle Times.

Flooding risk is growing throughout Western Washington. This photo is from a 2015 flood in Snoqualmie, WA. Photo by The Nature Conservancy.

“Salmon also are taking advantage of their new 101 acres of habitat,” he wrote. “The wider channel provides opportunities for the river to meander and create complex habitat, with refuge for juvenile salmon in channels with lower velocity during peak flows. Birds and other animals enjoy the new wetlands, and people are taking advantage of new trails. While this project may not remove the risk of all future flooding, it is vastly improving our quality of life.”

That early success has blossomed into a much larger collaborative effort along the Puyallup River. This offshoot, called Floodplains for the Future, is a coalition of the county, cities, tribes, agricultural and environmental interests that are now implementing dozens of projects up and down the river corridor.

Being at the same table has allowed these groups to find common ground. A proposed flood mitigation project by the city of Sumner, for example, had been stymied because the Muckleshoot and Puyallup Tribes did not see their perspectives represented in the plan.

“City leaders pivoted... and sat down with tribes and others and figured out how they could address the very serious flood risks in ways tribes could support,” Carey said. “Now it’s a much more ambitious, multi-benefit project that people are excited about.” The project is underway, supported through Floodplains by Design funds.

This collaborative approach is much different — and harder — than what usually occurs, Carey said. Traditionally, groups have developed plans focused on a single purpose, for example, restoring salmon habitat. “But then when you go to implement,” Carey said, “the people affected by that project are like, ‘Wait, wait, wait; that’s not what I want to see there.’”

Floodplains by Design projects improve salmon habitat while also protecting Tribal and agricultural lands from floods. Photo by BLM.

That’s why successful ecosystem management requires “building trust and respect, and really listening to folks to understand what their needs are,” Carey said. “And then embracing those needs in the plan that you craft—in partnership with the other interests at the table.” While it may be harder to develop a plan that multiple interests support, collaboration can ultimately facilitate implementation while generating a much higher return on investment.

Today, Floodplains by Design has become a model for floodplain management around the world. With climate change driving increased flooding, innovative approaches like this are increasingly important. Carey and his colleagues have presented to Conservancy chapters and floodplain managers around the U.S., and in Canada, China and New Zealand. The language of multi-benefit solutions pioneered by the program now infuses conversations among floodplain managers, conservation organizations and state and federal agencies, Carey said. 

Nature in an Urban Landscape

To have an impact on the scale of Puget Sound, we had to invest not only in its tributaries, but in the cities and towns that surround this iconic water body. Drawing on Floodplains by Design’s lessons in collaboration across sectors, we launched our Cities program in 2016.

"A thriving Puget Sound requires successes at the street and neighborhood level,” said Chris Hilton, the Conservancy’s urban partnerships director. “And it also requires the regional vision that the Conservancy brings, the ability to identify common problems and help communities generate solutions.”

A rain garden under the Aurora Bridge in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, where polluted stormwater will be naturally filtered before flowing into Lake Union. Photo by Hannah Letinich.

Our Cities program engages communities to make the Puget Sound’s urban landscapes more livable and climate resilient. In particular, our focus on stormwater pollution implements bioswales and raingardens to filter toxic runoff from busy streets and highways. As climate change increases rainfall in Puget Sound, the stormwater challenge is becoming increasingly urgent. Through a lens of equity and environmental justice, we also partner with local organizations to enhance the urban tree canopy, build rain gardens to purify polluted stormwater and increase access to nature in underserved neighborhoods.

Diverse interests, working together, have shown what’s possible.

In 2017, developer Mark Grey of Stephen C. Grey & Associates wanted to know how his project at the base of Seattle’s Aurora Bridge could help endangered salmon by filtering the toxic water running off the bridge and directly into Lake Union.  

The bridge runoff “looked like a cup of coffee that’s been sitting around for five days, dark and sludgy,” Hilton said. Testing showed high levels of zinc, copper, lead and other pollutants that contribute to the decline of endangered salmon, orca and other wildlife.

The Conservancy collaborated with Grey, other nonprofits including Clean Lake Union and Salmon Safe, and state and local agencies to navigate a complex permitting process for swales and rain gardens that will eventually capture and clean more than 2 million gallons of bridge runoff annually.

Today, water flowing through first phase of the project, completed in 2018, is nearly clear, and pollutants have been reduced to safe levels. People living and working in the densely populated neighborhood can also enjoy the added green space, which helps boost activity levels and reduce stress. More gardens along the Burke Gilman trail will be complete in June, thanks in part to an additional $500,000 in state funding we helped secure.

In South Puget Sound, another project is not only cleaning stormwater runoff but also providing nutritious food and a connection to home.

In 2017, we began a partnership with World Relief Seattle to transform an unused church parking lot in Kent into a food garden where immigrants and refugees now grow produce that isn’t always accessible in their new surroundings. Cisterns provide most of the irrigation water, and rain gardens collect the remaining stormwater running off the hillside.

“The Kent Hillside Parking Plots projects demonstrates the value of community-led decision making and projects with multiple benefits for communities. The project is both a fantastic example of using nature to clean water, and it meets a true need identified and led by community.

Volunteers came out to build a community garden in Kent, Washington. Photo by Hannah Letinich.

Moving Forward, Together

Looking ahead, our state faces enormous challenges from climate change. We are all facing this crisis together and, without strong interventions, the health of our forests and waters will continue to decline, and with them, human health and well-being.

Whether in cities, forests or floodplains, the Conservancy’s partnerships are making landscapes more climate resilient and helping communities mitigate changes that are already apparent, such as more intense wildfires and floods.

We’re also helping to build and sustain one of the largest and most diverse advocacy coalitions in state history. Through the 2018 ballot Initiative 1631 to boldy advance climate policy, we helped welcome many voices to the table. An inclusive approach is shifting the dialog around climate change, and environmental equity and social justice must be part of broad-scale solutions. Our combined voices created a powerful force that is here to stay.

Only diverse interests working together can achieve the large-scale change needed. With 60 years of practice building coalitions, the Conservancy is ready to lead in the fight for a sustainable future, says State Director Mike Stevens.

“There’s a lot of value in the Conservancy’s history of bringing different kinds of people together to work on common-sense solutions,” Stevens said. “We are in a position to work across political differences, across geographic differences, to build coalitions and generate solutions.”

Banner photo by Jeff Marsh.

Beyond 60: Indigenous Knowledge Strengthens Conservation & Community

Returning to the territories of his First Nation, the Ahousaht people of Clayoquot Sound in British Columbia, the first thing Tyson Atleo always hears is, “Welcome home, it’s nice to see you here.”

That sense of being truly home deepens when Atleo, the son of an Ahousaht hereditary chief, paddles up the blue-green rivers where salmon spawn, steelhead laze in cold, deep pools and eagles rest in the branches above. Those watersheds “are like the arteries of this place,” he said, “that’s where we get our life from.”

Out on the beaches, you might see wolf tracks in the sand or spot a grey whale in the surf. “You get this westerly breeze in your face, fresh sea air, then turn around and cross this threshold into Sitka spruce and old-growth forest,” Atleo said. “And whoosh, you're bombarded with green and this infinite stimulus, it's infinitely complex.”

Clayoquot Sound sustains the last old-growth forests on Vancouver Island and is a critical piece of the largest intact coastal rainforest on Earth known as the Emerald Edge. Spanning 100 million acres across Alaska, British Columbia and Washington, the Emerald Edge supports as much biodiversity as its tropical counterparts and more than 50 Indigenous peoples and myriad communities.

“Our people and our culture are being grown by the lifeblood of this place, and being informed and shaped by it,” Atleo said. “So it’s more than a home. It’s a caregiver, it’s a teacher.”

Community-Centered Conservation

How can The Nature Conservancy work at the scale of the massive Emerald Edge ecosystem? That’s the question we asked ourselves about a decade ago. The answer, says Emerald Edge Director Eric Delvin, rested with the local and Indigenous peoples whose lives are intertwined with these lands and waters.  

“The most effective approach is to invest in the people who have lived there since time immemorial and know how to take care of it,” Delvin said. “The research, as well as our own experience, tell us this works.”

That experience includes nearly 15 years supporting the development of the Great Bear Rainforest agreement in the heart of the Emerald Edge. First signed in 2008 and finalized in 2016, the historic agreement among 27 First Nations and the British Columbia and Federal governments protects 9 million acres of forest from logging and requires sustainable practices on millions more. The Conservancy raised $39 million towards a $120-million endowment to support the capacity of these nations to manage their lands and build sustainable economic opportunities.

Today in the Great Bear Rainforest, member nations are stopping pipelines from crossing their territory and enforcing new regulations — prompted by indigenous knowledge — prohibiting grizzly bear trophy hunting. First Nation communities have created 45 new businesses and 767 new permanent jobs.

“What we see,” Delvin said, “is that if you make sure communities that really care about a place have livelihoods and management authority, you’re going to have really good conservation outcomes.”

Also read: Beyond 60: The Nexus of People & Nature in the Central Cascades

Matching Conservation with Tribal Priorities

The success of the Great Bear Rainforest agreement prompted other First Nations in the Emerald Edge to reach out to the Conservancy.

“Because of the leadership the Conservancy had shown in the Great Bear Rainforest agreements,” Atleo said, the hereditary chiefs invited us into his community about a decade ago.

“Our leaders in Clayoquot Sound recognized that those agreements allowed the nations in the central coast to conserve and protect some of their land base... while also generating economic value from that conservation work,” said Atleo, who helped lead the development of his nation’s vision for their territory. He has since become the Economic Development Lead for our Emerald Edge and Canada programs.

Early in the partnership, the Conservancy provided small capacity grants to help the Ahousaht stand up a stewardship office and support community conversations around people’s values for the land and how those could be supported.

“We knew we would not be successful if we went in and said, ‘We want to protect this for you,’” Delvin said. “We needed to go in when we were invited in and really support the capacity of each nation to envision a different future.”

At one meeting, an Ahousaht chief rolled out an old map covered with hundreds of dots marking important points in their territory, Delvin recalls. The Conservancy pulled that information into a digital map with all of the place names in the Ahousaht language, which the nation then shared in meetings with the provincial government.

“Through that process, the Ahousaht were able to more effectively communicate to the Provincial government where culturally important places were,” Delvin said.

As a result, the final maps captured places that were culturally valuable, as well as those scientists had identified as ecologically important. “So they were fully endorsed by the community,” Delvin said.

In addition to the Ahousaht, the Conservancy worked with the Tla-o-qui-aht and Hesquiaht First Nations, whose territories also lie in Clayoquot Sound. The three nations are now negotiating with the British Columbia government to implement their conservation visions, which include permanent protection for about 300,000 acres of forest. The Conservancy is helping ensure the nations have the expertise and capacity to engage effectively in those talks.

Just as important, says Atleo, the nations’ land use visions ensure that they benefit from the area’s natural resources. Clayoquot Sound’s growing tourism economy has left out First Nations, with on-reserve household income roughly half that of other communities in the area. “We can’t expect people to want to conserve while staying in poverty,”  Atleo said.

To that end, the Conservancy is raising $16.5 million toward an endowment to support sustainable stewardship funding in Clayoquot Sound, such as hiring natural resource managers, reconnecting youth to their territories and fostering sustainable businesses.

In the Great Bear, investments made possible by that earlier endowment are coming to fruition. “For kids now in college or coming back from college,” Delvin said, “there's a place for them and an economy built around stewardship, fisheries and tourism, and this healthy dependence on the natural resources.”

The Great Bear endowment is also providing communities in that region with “a bit of a buffer” during the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Delvin pointed out. Once in place, the Clayoquot agreements and endowment will help those communities be more economically resilient too.

We’re also ensuring that Indigenous peoples across the Emerald Edge — and beyond — have opportunities to learn from each other.

After conversations with their counterparts in British Columbia, Native Alaskan leaders decided to start their own stewardship endowment and have pledged $10 million. Meanwhile, leaders from Emerald Edge communities traveled to Australia to meet with indigenous peoples there, and they came away with a social media strategy that contributed to British Columbia’s trophy hunting ban.    

“The greatest thing we’ve learned in the Emerald Edge program is the power of bringing people together,” Atleo said. “Providing a safe space for people to express themselves, build trust, feel connected to their peers — this is where real learning happens, and where we can see some significant, scaled impact.”

Trust as an Essential Element

Through its work in the Emerald Edge, the Conservancy has learned a great deal about how to build good working relationships with indigenous communities. But it’s not always easy, both Atleo and Delvin acknowledge.

“It's very hard for people to imagine a reality that is different from what has been offered for the last half a century, which is, ‘We will take from you and not give anything back — we will take the timber, we'll take the fish,’” Atleo said. “So words like ‘protection’ are scary to those communities.”

We can’t forget that past, Atleo emphasized. “Sixty years ago, the intent was to oppress that [indigenous] way of thinking of being on the planet,” he said. “Yet here we are in 2020 celebrating the potential for indigenous cultures to inform the rest of the world how to care for natural systems.

“And that’s why building trustful relationships in indigenous communities is so important,” he said. “Washington is a leader in showing how to do that across the Conservancy.”

In Washington and across North America, our evolving partnerships with indigenous communities have spurred us to think differently about all of the lands we own and manage, says Director of Conservation James Schroeder.

Places that we protected a few decades ago for their habitat value or unique geology have been important to tribes forever. Ancestral lands and waters were integrally represented and reflected in systems of governance, society and spirituality; yet tribes in many cases were forced to give them up. These spaces have provided not only food and sustenance for generations, but also community and identity.

Today, Schroeder said, the Conservancy is taking a closer look at how protecting ecological values can also protect cultural and social values. We’re also exploring opportunities to return ownership and management of lands we hold to tribes.

“How do we support tribes to exercise their treaty rights and have access to the resources they've been promised?” Schroeder said. “Because many of those resources can come from properties that we manage and steward.”

“We can’t achieve our long-term conservation goals of healthy lands and waters and a livable climate without the support and knowledge of indigenous communities.”