When Protecting Wildlife Gets Personal

The wheels of our car crunch on shell and gravel as we back up to the beach on Puget Sound. We lift the kayaks out of the car rack, then carry them to the water's edge. The pungent smell of salt water fills my nose. I inhale deeply, reminded of the blessings of living so near bays surrounded by evergreen hills and thrusting mountain ranges.

My husband and I took up kayaking 10 years ago. We loved the access it gave us to the sound, its wildlife and scenery. Kayaking has also made me an avid environmentalist. When you are on (and sometimes in) the water, diesel oil, seabirds entangled in fishing line and floating garbage stand out like obscenities.

Nowadays I also notice what's happening out of the water along the shorelines. I see more and more people building houses on the beach, and bulkheads to protect them. I wonder if these homeowners know what I've come to learn in the last year: bulkheads are bad for fish, especially salmon.

Last spring I began working on behalf of my mother to preserve her home that sits above a very similar beach on the sound northwest of downtown Seattle. Since then I've had to learn about beaches and the walls that protect them, hydraulics and tidal habitats, permits and bureaucracies. In short, I have found out what it means to own waterfront property in the Pacific Northwest since the federal government named several runs of Northwest salmon, including Puget Sound Chinook, as threatened or endangered species. Bulkheads which destroy beach habitat and take away the natural hiding places salmon fingerlings use to evade predators--have been targeted as part of the problem.

In 1962, the year of the Seattle World's Fair, my parents moved from Washington's dry interior to its coast. My father had long been in love with Seattle. When he found the waterside cottage on a tiny road at the foot of Seattle's Magnolia Bluff, he felt God had led him there. The cottage had only two bedrooms and 1,200 square feet, but it looked out over a terraced rose garden to Puget Sound's pulsing waters. There ferries floated like giant birthday cakes; the lights of West Seattle and Bainbridge Island glowed in the distance. Winter sunsets silhouetted the Olympic Mountains in gold, orange and fuchsia. Raccoons came to the porch to beg for food, and herons patrolled the shore. My parents were enchanted. This was their Camelot. They continually exclaimed at their luck at being able to live out their years in such a spot.

But as property values leapt, their income and health declined with retirement and age. The house became their major investment, and one they could barely afford. My father managed through innovation and a tight budget. He hired teenagers instead of contractors to make house repairs. When he could no longer walk the stairs to the beach, he checked the health of the bulkhead by sending others to photograph it with a Polaroid camera. When my father died in 1992, my mother believed she was provided for. "I have my pension and Social Security, and I have the house," she told me. "I'll be fine."