Comment: More work needed after mixed report on State of Sound

By William Derry / For The Herald

The Puget Sound Partnership has released its biennial State of the Sound report, which finds that while overall the Puget Sound is holding on, its recovery remains uncertain.

This very mixed scorecard is concerning. Merely clinging to life with little movement toward improvement of the health of the sound, its ecosystems and species is not sufficient progress in the restoration of this beautiful inland sea around which we live.

The report uses 44 vital signs to represent the many aspects of the health of the sound. While six of those vital signs are looking up and five are clearly down, 23 show no clear trend of decline or improvement and seven have mixed results with both good and bad components (three have insufficient data). A few examples of particular vital signs:

Estuarine wetlands, where fresh and saltwater mix, are critical to salmon, marine birds, shorebirds and waterfowl. Nearly 80 percent of estuarine wetlands around Puget Sound have been diked for urban development or farmland in the last 150 years. We are fortunate in Snohomish County to have the Snohomish County Surface Water Management Division, the Tulalip Tribes and the Stillaguamish Tribe, Nature Conservancy and others that have restored thousands of acres of estuary for the Snohomish and Stillaguamish Rivers. Still more of this work is needed.

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