The Dungeness River has brought water to the prairie plains of the Dungeness Valley for 107 years, ever since pioneers dug irrigation ditches by hand to bring it there.  Located at the foot of the Olympic Mountains, the Sequim-Dungeness valley is extraordinarily beautiful, green and lush, as a result. 

Now the plans of the various agencies are to return the river to its “natural” state by “restoration” projects.  “Important river processes are altered when a dike is built that doesn’t allow flood waters to dissipate energy by spreading out across the floodplain, or that inhibits the river’s natural ability to store excessive sediment outside the channel”, the restoration report says.[5] “These problems are the primary causes for increased flooding risks and declining fish populations in the Dungeness.”  However, “restoring” the river by removing structures like the many dikes that protect would cause flooding across the valley, endangering homes and possibly lives.

“Restoration activities are challenged by the fact that most of the property surrounding the lower Dungeness River is privately owned,” the report continues.[6]  “Some work will require substantial funding, permits, property acquisition, easements or other types of agreements with willing landowners, some of which could be considered contentious,” it states.  (I wonder how a “willing” landowner could also be “contentious” – isn’t that a contradiction in terms?”)

The grant application repeats these words: “The lower river and estuary have been altered by diking, roadbuilding, and development causing degraded estuarine/riparian habitat, channel confinement, aggradation and related bedload instability…. The project will primarily benefit spawning and rearing of summer chum, lower river pink salmon and Chinook…Match is available from landowners, WDFW [Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife], USFS [U.S. Forest Service] and NOLT [North Olympic Land Trust].”[7] 

In other words, the buyout really has nothing to do with protecting landowners, and everything to do with “restoring the ecological processes of the estuary and lower Dungeness River.”[8]

Words mean things

We hear a lot about this word “restore”.  What does it really mean?  We went to the U.S. Department of Commerce “Stream Corridor Restoration” site to find a definition.  Here are several:

 “Ecological restoration” -the process of returning an ecosystem as closely as possible to ‘predisturbance’ conditions and functions. [as in, before European settlers], as compared to

“Rehabilitation” - making the land useful again after a disturbance. Involves establishing stable landscapes that support the ‘natural ecosystem’ mosaic’. (from the US Department of Commerce “Stream Corridor Restoration - principles, process, practices”. (www.ntis.gov/yellowbk/1nty82.1.htm) or

“Reclamation” - implies the process of serving a “utilitarian human purpose”

“Disturbances to Stream Corridors” - reviews the range of natural and ‘human induced’ disturbances that can ‘stress the corridor ecosystem’.

Where does this attack on people’s right to own private property originate?  In the plans for the river, statements are made that the river must become "self-sustaining." The Washington State Department of Ecology (DOE) is the lead agency overseeing the changes along the river.  In reviewing their website, you’ll notice the word “sustainable” used frequently.  We discussed the issue of “sustainability” in a previous article, and learned that it looks an awful lot like socialism.[9]  Biosphere reserves (of which we are one here on the North Olympic Peninsula) involve the concept of “sustainability.”

U.N. biosphere reserves, along with U.N. World Heritage Sites (our Olympic Mountains hold both designations), are covered under the U.N. Biodiversity Treaty.  We live in a “buffer zone” for this U.N. biosphere.  At the United Nations level, the Biodiversity Treaty, which was a relatively short document, (and which incorporates the "Wildlands Project") is further developed by another document, the Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA).  It’s in that document that we see terms very much like the ones in our local “Restoration Projects” papers that are working to bring about the public ownership of our river.

“Unsustainable Projects”

Noted as “unsustainable” in the GBA, is “While dam construction is the most obvious human intervention leading to the loss of wetland habitats, other engineering works also cause problems.  For example, straightening rivers decreases the retention of matter and energy, naturally functioning floodplains provide wildlife habitat and help reduce or buffer non-point-source pollution.”[10]

“”Irrigation has continued to play a role in agricultural activities world-wide…Over the last few decades it has played a vital role in the dramatic increase in food production.”  This is considered an “unsustainable” project.[11]

“Rivers are also being influenced through human activities in their catchments, which are being influenced by embankments, draining, deforestation, urbanization and industry.”  Unsustainable, says the GBA.[12]

“Agricultural activities which have destroyed much of the original prairie habitat.”  Unsustainable again![13] 

“A decline in biodiversity has been associated with the specific land-use changes associated with economic development such as power line construction,” says the GBA.  Unsustainable![14] Well, you get the idea!

“Legislation should facilitate government land acquisition for conservation purposes by instituting a right of pre-acquisition over land coming on the market, a right of compulsory purchase, and tax incentives for vendors”, says the GBA.[15]

The following quotes are very telling about where we’re headed:

“The major cause of biodiversity loss in recent historical times is human action, primarily land use that alters and degrades habitat to serve human needs.  Yet the ability to forecast the impact of specific actions on biodiversity is not yet well developed.”[16]

“A major factor of success in designing sustainable exploitations systems is the cooperative capacity of the local community, and its ability to design and implement management plans.”[17]

“…land-use planning is the responsibility of local governments.  There are two broad categories:  comprehensive planning and environmental site planning.  Comprehensive planning includes anticipatory mechanisms such as zoning to define appropriate land-uses and anticipate or direct certain types of development.  Comprehensive land-use plans are implemented through four basic instruments: (1) public acquisition; (2) public investment; (3) incentives, and (4) regulation.”[18]

The same GBA discusses religious and spiritual values, and points to Christianity as the primary problem for loss of biodiversity.  Consider:

“Stressing the place of humans outside nature, and the need for and possibility of technology mastering nature, these attitudes tend to treat all biodiversity elements as material resources created for human use.  Therefore, nothing is ‘wrong’ in the extinguishing of other life-forms if the pursuit of material well-being (called ‘progress’) is served by it…Such modern materialist views have directly or indirectly led to considerable over-exploitation of nature, and consequently to the loss of biodiversity.”[19]

“If a new ethic and a revolutionary change in human consciousness are necessary to support conservation purposes, why is there a general lack of support for non-utilitarian causes, and why are current cultural values usually human-centred?”[20]

“This world-view is characteristic of large-scale societies, heavily dependent on resources brought from considerable distances.  It is a world view that is characterized by the denial of sacred attributes in nature, a characteristic that has its roots in Greek philosophy, and became firmly established about 2000 years ago with the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic religious traditions.  With hunting, gathering, fishing and low-input agriculture and animal husbandry as the mainstay of subsistence, the people are also closely tied to the natural resources of their immediate environments.  They therefore tend to view themselves as members of a community that not only includes other humans, but also plants and animals as well as rocks, springs and pools.  People are then members of a community of beings – living and non-living.  Their relationships with other community members be they trees, birds or mountain peaks are moulded by the relationships with other human members of the communities, as recipients of altruistic or mutualistic favours.  Thus rivers may be viewed as mothers;…Animals may be treated as kin; thus antelopes are brothers…”[21]

“Societies dominated by Islam, and especially by Christianity, have gone farthest in setting humans apart from nature and in embracing a value system that has converted the world into a warehouse of commodities for human enjoyment.  In the process, not only has nature lost its sacred qualities… Conversion to Christianity has meant an abandonment of an affinity with the natural world for many forest dwellers, peasants, fishers all over the world…On so converting to a religious belief system that rejects assignment of sacred qualities to elements of nature, they began to cut down the sacred groves, to bring the land under cultivation, as well as to market rattan and timber…Many of these people have …re-established the sacred groves, although now they are termed safety forests instead….it is, however, identical to that which supported the protection of sacred groves in pre-Christian times.”[22]

“Locally-based conservation, is, in some ways, a reaffirmation of traditional ways of thinking about resources and the natural world….If conservation is to become embedded in our daily activities, nature and society must be intimately linked in our minds.  This is a radical departure from the Western view of the separateness of Man and Nature – one that rekindles a holistic, ancestral way of thinking about our species in relation to the rest of the natural world.”[23]

It would appear that we are being moved by the United Nations and its goals rather than our own locally elected representatives, as is set out in our U.S. Constitution.  It is up to each of us to educate those we place in office at the ballot box, and if they are unwilling to listen, work hard to replace them with individuals who cherish freedom and our way of life as much as we do.