Along the Nooksack River, the Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association restores damaged habitats that have left salmon populations dwindling. In the waters between the San Juan Islands, orca populations suffer as a result of the declining salmon. Farther north is the habitat of the Cherry Point herring, a primary salmon food source that the Northwest Ecosystem Alliance is petitioning to have listed as an endangered species. The decline of these species in Whatcom County reflects an alarming global trend.
More than 99.9 percent of all species that have ever lived on Earth are extinct — the result of five mass extinctions. Seven out of 10 biologists say humans are causing a sixth mass extinction, according to a recent Public Broadcasting Service poll. Mass extinctions are part of Earth’s history. Never before, however, has one species single-handedly provoked the extinction of such large numbers of organisms. Because of this, local and international organizations are spearheading conservation projects despite the inevitability and recurrence of local species loss.
"I think a lot of times folks will say (species loss) is so big and complicated," said John Thompson, the Endangered Species Act resource planner for Whatcom County Public Works. "It’s just sort of a rationalization to throw up your hands and say, ‘Well, we can’t do anything.’ My personal perspective is that there are some things that we can do that we have sufficient documentation to justify, and we have a responsibility to do them. Whether we are ultimately successful, we’ll see."
The Northwest Ecosystem Alliance is a group dedicated to protecting and restoring local wild ecosystems.
"It’s not just a matter of ethics and whether it is wrong to drive a species to extinction," said Hudson Dodd, the outreach coordinator for the alliance. "We need healthy, functioning ecosystems. That’s where our water supply comes from. That’s where our clean air comes from. It’s where our recreation and solace come from, and we can’t reconstruct these things once they are gone."
In the late ’60s, Paul Ehrlich was a pioneer in revealing the dangers of overpopulation with his book, "The Population Bomb." He continues to research the issue today.
"We are well into causing the biggest extinction in 65 million years," said Ehrlich, a professor of population studies and president of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University.
Mass extinctions are difficult to define as they occur in varying degrees. Thor Hansen, a Western Washington University geology professor, said mass extinctions include mass species loss across all borders, from land to sea, and occur over geologic time, which refers to the millions of years it takes for geologic structures to form.
"One of the important things to emphasize is that even the so-called mass extinctions weren’t events where, over the course of 25 years, there was a dramatic, noticeable loss," Western biology professor Merrill Peterson said. "Even those events were prolonged over thousands of years, so had humans been there, they would have been as blind to those events as they are today."
Niles Eldredge is one of the leading researchers studying the correlation between mass extinctions and the present biodiversity crisis.
"Humans are transforming the globe and are the direct cause of the sixth extinction," said Eldredge, the curator for the division of paleontology at the National Museum of Natural History. "Earth is home. It is beautiful. And we, in trashing the natural world, are ruining the beauty of the world. … Ultimately, the fate of Homo sapiens does depend upon the fate of the planet."
Extinction is a natural process, as ecosystems are constantly changing. The appearance of some species and disappearance of others defines the basis of evolution, said Mohammad Rafiq, the head of biodiversity for the International Union for the Conser- vation of Nature.
"When evolutionary processes take place in full appreciation of the context of the ecosystem, everything evolves together," Rafiq said. "Human-influenced extinctions lead to other things."
Humans are altering the planet so quickly and aggressively that estimates place species loss 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than the natural rate of one species every four years, according to the union.
"Global biodiversity is changing at an unprecedented rate because of land conversion, pollution, climate change and the introduction of new species," said Brennan Van Dyke, the director of the North American regional office of the United Nations Environment Program.
In Whatcom County, local organizations work to protect and rehabilitate threatened habitats and species.
The Northwest Ecosystem Alliance utilizes various outlets to achieve its objectives. In addition to acquiring land, the group raises funds to purchase timber rights, influences public-land management, pushes to pass laws and works to list local species as endangered, Dodd said.
Through grants and private donations, the Whatcom Land Trust works to acquire lands and rights to protect against development, said Ann Russell, a Whatcom Land Trust conservation specialist.
For example, in 1998, trust board member Rand Jack and the trust finalized a $3.6 million deal for 2,300 acres called the Canyon Lake Creek Old Growth Community Forest. The land includes 700 acres of the second oldest old-growth forest in Washington — trees some 800 to 1,000 years old — that otherwise would have been clear-cut.
Jack said it is rare to find old growths more than 500 years old because large fires usually sweep through within this time span.
"It’s almost like a laboratory of ancient trees and the things that go with ancient trees that you can’t reproduce," Jack said. "It’s an opportunity to try and understand the ecological relationships in the context of a laboratory where those ecological relationships have been working themselves out for a thousand years."
The trust endows a conservation easement to the Canyon Lake area that restricts development, Russell said. Whatcom County and Western Washington University mutually own the land for public recreation, environmental education and scientific research. Old-growth forests are an archetype of biodiversity.
"One of the things that’s interesting about old-growth forests … is that there are species that only survive in old-growth forests," Jack said.
While the trust and the alliance work to preserve such ecosystems, Whatcom County continues to grow and develop, pushing species to the fringes of their habitats and existence.
With the help of two streamside crews and community work parties, the Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association works to restore sustainable salmon runs that have suffered from development, said Lindsay Taylor, the association’s education coordinator.
The nonprofit organization uses grant money and federal funds to restore and protect riparian areas. Landowners either contact the association or the group surveys areas potentially in need of help, Taylor said.
Endangered species, such as the chinook salmon of the Nooksack, are victims of thousands of years of rapid human progression, including the cultural and industrial revolutions and the post-World War II biomedical revolution that led to a population increase of 2.5 billion to 6 billion people worldwide, Ehrlich said.
"For the first time, the land surface changed dramatically," Ehrlich said, referring to the agricultural revolution of 10,000 years ago. "Instead of wandering around like any other mammal, we started planting monocultures."
Stationary living differs from the nomadic lifestyle of hunters and gatherers, whose impact on the environment was negligible, Western anthropology professor Todd Koetje said.
The stability of a stationary lifestyle allowed civilizations to grow, leading to overpopulation, Koetje said. Hansen said the rate of species loss mirrors the rate of human growth. The current pace of species loss is unlikely to stabilize if human population growth does not, Ehrlich said.
"The inter-workings of ecosystems are so complex that we are only beginning to realize how complex they are," Dodd said. "We aren’t able to save them, let alone reconstruct them. We can’t artificially recreate ecosystems. We can do repair work, but even that is in its infancy."
Conservationists like Dodd say scientists are far from a technical advancement to help restore these systems that are scarcely understood.
"We are just beginning to figure out the complexities of ecosystems. They are mind-boggling," Dodd said. "We take it for granted. We look for technology to save us and fix our problems.
Keeping an ecosystem healthy with all its intricate parts is on a scale that scientists aren’t even within the realm of offering a technological solution to."
As groups like the Whatcom Land Trust, Northwest Ecosystem Alliance and The Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association focus their efforts on conservation projects and preserving imperiledspecies, the loss of biodiversity continues locally as it does globally. And as the growth rate of Homo sapiens carries on in its swelling manner, the rate of species loss will continue at mass-extinction pace.