125 years ago on a Thanksgiving Day, Skagit County became official!  It has seen many changes and been through many ups and downs since then, but it is still a pretty nice place.  Many folks are thankful for our Natural Skagit.  Let’s hope many folks are still of that mind 125 years hence!

If you want to see what that big tree/shrub planting party back on Saturday Nov. 15 was like, click http://www.landtrust.homestead.com/elysiumfield1.html for pictures.  Planting parties are pretty much over for now, until late winter.  Get ready and watch for schedules.  You too can do this!

The Swan Hotline is open.  If you see a dead swan call 360 466 4345 and leave your name, contact information and the location.  Reporting helps track avian flu, lead poisoning, and electric-wire hits.  If swans are dying/getting hurt trying to fly into a field with electric/telephone wires along it, the company will usually festoon the wires with those twirly reflectors that keep the swans from passing through.

The Puget Sound Partnership Action Plan for “Saving Puget Sound by 2020” goes to the legislature in early December.  There are many troubling signs – higher, and more diverse pollution levels, resident Orca Whale numbers declining, smaller salmon runs, and plenty of other difficulties as well. 

The plan has many, many actions and measures and assignments for progressing.  What of it will be accepted?  How will it be financed? (Which is a huge problem right now, obviously.) How will we balance our need to preserve and enhance the farming ability that is left in Puget Sound with suggestions like: maintain 500 foot natural buffers between sprayed fields and waterways/ditches or; return some diked farming fields back to more natural fish habitat?
It is a topic that will be with us for a long time.  Let us hope we tackle it with adequate vigor and wisdom.  The alternative is not pretty, not pretty at all.  Try to get and stay as informed as you can.  http://www.psp.wa.gov is the official website.

In the meantime, keep finding your own special place and Dig In to help keep this big place nice.  Happy Thanksgiving!

The Local-Organization-You-Might-Want-To-Be-Involved-With this week is your own personal favorite charity.  Now is the time of year to go the extra mile for those who need some help.  And then get out and enjoy this special time in the Natural Skagit! 
Here are some near-term activities to consider:
Sat. Dec. 6 Heronry Tour 10:00am – 1:00pm Location not yet determined.  Check http://www.skagitlandtrust.org for details as location firmed up.  Lifetime opportunity!

Sat. Dec.6 Whistle Lake work party 9:00am http://www.friendsoftheacfl.org Take a break from the Holidays and help us yank non-native invasive English Ivy along trail 300.  This is a small patch that can easily be conquered with a fun work party event.  Let’s meet at the corner of O Ave and Spradley, at trailhead 300.  There is no hike, as the patch is near the road. 

Many similar events and activities and opportunities are posted on the GoSkagit Event Calendar.  Check it often! 

(This blog is a service of the Skagit Conservation Education Alliance (SCEA) http://www.skagitwater.org Your comments will be helpful.  New ideas to consider, and changes we should make are especially welcome.  Corrections and further enlightenment will help as well.  You can email to .  Thank you.)

ALERT!!! To those who don’t know animals in the wild die of old age! A dead swan hot line!  I can’t believe it.  How about a dead cat hot line, or maybe a dead squirrel hot line.  Better yet, a dead road kill hot line.  It’s amazing what you flower children in you graying years come up with to spend tax dollars.  This area is a nesting ground for swans and it stands to reason the also DIE HERE!  What a waste of taxpayer money.

Also those of you not familiar with farm life, cows lying on their sides in a field are not dead.  This also goes for horses.  Please don’t call 911 with “dead cow/horse in a field. Yes, people really do that.  Also let’s not add swans to any call list.

Anyone who subscribes to the idiocy that all the deaths are to blame on hunters who used to use lead shot should be put on a bus and sent back to San Francisco.  Seems like an “anti-gun” excuse to me more than a “Dead Swan” thing. 

Again it’s typical of those who moved here to change our way of life and our community and farms.  Bunch of losers.

Coming soon…how to drill out the flow restrictors in your kitchen and bath fixtures to improve the flow for clean dishes and a cleaner you.

Hippie Chaser - 26 November 2008 04:46 PM

Anyone who subscribes to the idiocy that all the deaths are to blame on hunters who used to use lead shot should be put on a bus and sent back to San Francisco.  Seems like an “anti-gun” excuse to me more than a “Dead Swan” thing.

I have a better idea.  How about when you get them all on the bus to SF you ride with them...?  I would pay to see that…
;-)

Hippie Chaser - 26 November 2008 04:46 PM

Again it’s typical of those who moved here to change our way of life and our community and farms.

I’m curious to know how you figure that your “way of life” and our community and farms have all been “change[d]”.

Hippie Chaser - 26 November 2008 04:46 PM

Bunch of losers.

Oh, yeah...those “losers” have helped save and continue to help save Skagit farmland as well as bringing more commerce, jobs, and tourism to Skagit County (which, of course, translates to $$).  It’s nearly scandalous, indeed.

Hippy Chaser and LivinUpRiver.....Can both of you remember Rodney King? Can’t we all just get along???? I am not a tree hugger, a native of Skagit, or someone who moved here to change your way of life. I am a transplant who happens to like the area and way of life I found here as well as a good portion of the people. Mr. Haase made some very good points, reporting dead swans helps prevent Avian flu, a very dangerous desease that has grown to near epidemic proportions in the past years and has threatened and taken human life (and nothing I’ve read either from Mr. Haase or elsewhere gives any suggestion that it came from lead poisening or mentioned guns at all, wierd huh?) I think Hippy Chaser needs to calm a bit, and perhaps offer Mr. Haase an apology for his harsh and incorrect response. I also believe that LivinUpRiver thought closely to this, but wrote the entry while the passion was still high. We all have a right to our opinions, passions, and pet projects. This seems to be all Mr. Haase was trying to advertise and good for him! I disagree with many things Mr. Haase has to say and I also have a right to do that and to publish in this forum my opinions, but if I attack Mr. Haase instead of stating my opinions what does that make me? A Loser?, probably. Hateful?, most assuredly. Whatever it does make me, it doesn’t make me anything I want to be or want my children to think of me as. Good for you Mr. Haase for posting your thoughts and opinions in a free forum, shame on both of you Hippy Chaser and LivinUpRiver for attacking and shaming instead of using your precious right of free speech to share a message with others.

BobJ - 29 November 2008 01:40 PM

I also believe that LivinUpRiver thought closely to this, but wrote the entry while the passion was still high.

There was no passion in my response to HC.

“Again it’s typical of those who moved here to change our way of life and our community and farms.  Bunch of losers. ”

Isn’t it a rather self centered point of view that says my way of life is the way it should be? When I came to live here 35 years ago about the only place to work was the logging or fishing industry. It was hard work and it was low pay. Seasonal unemployment ran into the double digits. We cut firewood and stole cedar bolts to get by. Today the ecomomy is much more diversified and sustainable. I don’t like some of what’s come with that, but I’ve made my peace with it, just as I’ve had to make peace with my gray hair and all it represents. Many good things have come with these changes. Remember that pioneer families moved here too, from foreign parts. Native Americans sure weren’t too happy about the changes that brought them. Burned and stolen lands. Pestilence and death.

Can’t all Skagit Valley residents find some joy in the growing numbers of swans that winter here, thanks to the fish and game enhancements? Did you know this valley is host to one of the most diverse raptor and waterfowl in the country? Most hunters I know are good stewards of the land and are doing their part to protect habitat and bird population. Most conservation work is done by volunteers from all walks of life and political persuation. It is through good works such as these that we continue to be a vibrant strong community and know our neighbors.

Is lead poisonous? Yes, it is. No one is trying to take your gun away, just load steel shot.

What is wrong with a little verbal fighting. Don’t want it to be to boring with “Just The Facts”.

Burned and stolen lands. Now there stealing the white mans money at their casinos. They are getting back at us.

I was born in Mount Vernon and I disagree with almost everything HippieChaser has to say, he represents the minority opinion.