Last week the Whatcom County Council approved with a vote of 7-0, the Whatcom County Parks plan for a 30 car parking lot that covers over one and a half acres of prime eagle habitat. Sandwiched in between 2 alternative eagle nests the plan seems to be designed to get rid of eagles. Once again proving that our government is out of touch with the people and wildlife that populate its shores.

Yes both WDFW & USFWS have once again buried their heads in the sand and refused to stand up and do their jobs. What is their job? We’re led to believe that they are to protect the wildlife and environment that we live in and share. But when issues come up, they are quick to point out that they don’t have the budget to send someone to Point Roberts. Apparently they don’t have the budget to hire anyone who knows about eagles.

The new parking lot plan when built will be in violation of six different provisions of the Bald & Golden Eagle Protection Act. Yet the only input about eagles came from a Bald Eagle Management Plan written by Jenifer Bohannon of WDFW. In the plan all Bohannon talks about are trees. There is no mention of the resident eagles nest. No mention of the eagle night roosts, no mention of the daily perch trees that the eagles need to wait for feeding opportunities.

It used to be that only developers hired “biostitutes” – private professional biologists paid by developers to say what they want to hear and present the biological data they want to see, the true biological impact of the plans be damned. Now it seems that WDFW has their own biostitutes on staff ready to approve any plan that Whatcom County puts in front of them.

Last year Bohannon wrote a similar plan for the western part of Lily Point. She talked about tree buffers and didn’t seem to notice that she hadn’t identified where the eagle nest was. In fact it was WDFW’s position that there wasn’t any eagle nest on the property. So we called out WDFW and led them to the nest, to which they replied, “well its looks like it could be an eagle’s nest, but we can’t be sure.” So this spring when a baby eaglet popped its head above the rim of the nest, WDFW still had not come out to see it. You see unless a WDFW agent sees the eagles in the nest, then it doesn’t exist. Bohannon gave me the usual “we’ve had budget cut backs, and we’ll try to get out there when we can.”

So how do we know just how egregious Whatcom County Parks plan is. Well here is what David Hancock had to say about Lily Point for eagles.

“If I had any summary statement to make about Lily Point and its implication to bald eagles it would simply be that: Lily Point is probably the single most important square mile of bald eagle habitat in the entire south-west of British Columbia and north-west Washington State — both as a breeding site but much more importantly as a loafing and roosting site throughout the year.” — David Hancock (who’s David Hancock? oh just the top eagle expert in North America, who’s been studying eagles for over 50 years.)

But this isn’t about the #1 resident of Lily Point, bald eagles. Never mind that just 3 years ago the state and federal government spent 3 million dollars to preserve this special eagle habitat. Back then the eagles were a selling point to get the money, and now that they got the money and the park, they can now get even more money, in this case $500,000, to build a parking lot that the people of Point Roberts were vehemently against, and will result in the death of eagles, and severely compromise the poor eagle pair in trying to raise eaglets within the park.

So now those who live in Point Roberts are going to have to bear the shame, and bury the anger over the Counties death sentence towards eagles. You see WDFW & USFWS are only going to care about a species as long as its threatened with extinction. So after decades or struggling to bring the eagle back into the ecosystem, our government is now proving once more why its our government that sent the eagles on the endangered species list in the first place. From 1917 to 1952 our government paid people to kill eagles. Over one million eagles were killed by bounty hunters.

Now the killing will be much more insidious, as the last refuge gets compromised the eagles won’t be shot, they will slowly starve to death, crawl off behind a bush or tree stump and simply expire.

“Death was in their glare” comes from the Odyssey, written by Homer, one of the oldest books in western civilization. Back then God (Zeus) sent eagles with messages and omens down to the earth telling mortal man what was coming. The omen from the Whatcom County Council, Whatcom County Parks, Whatcom Land Trust, Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife, The Federal Department of Fish & Wildlife Service; is that Americans are going to continue to be the only group of people in the history of man to not revere and treat eagles as being sacred. We are going to continue to destroy their habitat, and continue to ignore those who do care about them and want to see them given the respect they deserve. If eagles die from the Counties development policies then that is just too bad, we have money to spend and land to develop as we please.

So I’ve just scratched the surface of this story, and I’ve lost my editor, but I will be rolling out in the coming weeks, the whole story, and then maybe you will understand how I came to write this blog today. I hope you don’t mind a few grammatical errors, we’ve had our budget cutbacks too!