>> Patricia Donnellan: Hi. I'm Patricia Donnellan and I'm a Microsoft employee who really
cares about the giving campaign. This is my absolute favorite time of the year, the month
where we get to relax our policies and have our favorite nonprofits come on board and drive
the awareness across our campaign. For those of you who are new to Microsoft or need a
gentle reminder, we have some changes to the policy that I want to highlight for you. This year
they've announced that, one, there is no minimum for matching. That means hours and
monetary matching. Previously, you had to donate at least four hours of your time at a
nonprofit in a block in order to have that matched, and so now there's no minimum, so you
could spend an hour sorting things at the Goodwill and have that matched at $25 per hour,
which is amazing. And there's also no minimum. Previously for overhead costs we had the
minimum donation at $25, and now it's pretty much a dollar, so if you give $10 to a bake sale,
that's going to be matched and it also is matched with your name. As we're driving for
significant participation this year, neo-participation, those that are new to Microsoft, those new
employees also benefit from having $50 sitting out there at the gift site for them. If they go to
whack whack gift, they will see at the top, I think it's in red, a banner that has $50. They can go
and choose to spend Microsoft's 50 bucks that they put in their account, find their favorite
nonprofit, donate $50. If they choose to they can donate another $25 and Microsoft matches
at $25, so 50, 25, 25, your nonprofit just got 100 bucks for five minutes of your time and that's
for any employees. I believe that it sits how there in the give tool for 18 months or two years or
so. So when you are overwhelmed at Microsoft and drinking from the fire hose, put that in
your back pocket and six months later when you're coming up for air, find whatever drives your
passion for the community. Today, I'm standing before you because our beloved Monica
Rosenberg had an urgent issue that took her out of the Seattle area this week, so I am just
standing in for Monica. Although, she's really the person behind this event today and cares so
deeply about the National Parks Conservation Agency. In a moment I'm going to hand it over to
our two speakers. We have Shannon Brundle who has been with the National Parks
Conservation Association for about three years. She's the connective tissue over there. She
understands what it means to bring the volunteers together. If you've got interests in
volunteering in this area, I highly recommend reaching out to Shannon who I'm sure will ensure
her contact information with you shortly. And then we also have one of my good friends who I
am really glad to see here today, Paul Balle who will be celebrating one year with the National
Parks in December, but he's got 15 years of conservation nonprofit work under his belt and
before that, of course, he was one of us. He was with Microsoft about 10 years. So we're
excited to have these two folks here to talk to us about the National Parks Conservation. For
those of you in the room I have a couple of questions for you. If you can answer them I got
some really great swag that I'm going to throw at you. I've got a good right hook. For anyone
who is just joining in the room, there's pizza, great Pogliaghi in the back, feel free to help
yourself. Raise your hand or not if you know the employee matching limit, so that would be
what you give in merchandise and its matched from Microsoft Store. So either merchandise or
time at $25 an hour or cash donations, what's the maximum matching from Microsoft per year?
From all the money that you donate what does it cap out to for matching.
>>: Oh, okay, for matching up. Well, 16,000.
>> Patricia Donnellan: Yes. Are you ready? Okay. Employee done. My favorite new swag from
the gift campaign this year is Amazing Lip Balm. I've got more up here so please see me
afterwards and take some. I got some Kind bars and some extra stickers and stuff. We've got
40 minutes left in this. I'm going to initiate for those online. I'm going to initiate the life
question tag, so if you've got a question in the streaming, please type it in and we'll get your
answer for any questions that you have. We'll start with Shannon, Senior Administrator and
Outreach Coordinator and then we'll follow-up with Paul, the Regional Development Director.
>> Paul Balle: We're going to do the opposite.
>> Patricia Donnellan: We're going to swap, actually. We are going to start with Paul. He's
hungry and he wants to get back to his pizza, so Paul, thanks for being here. Come on up and
give us a chat.
>> Paul Balle: Thank you, Patricia, and we really appreciate you standing in for Monica. We
miss you Monica, but this is being recorded so everyone will have a chance to view this again.
I've been with NPCA for about a year now, just shy, right now. It's a great organization. We do
some really great things and hopefully, we can tell you a little bit about that today. This slide
was created by our regional director, Rob Smith, and I kind of chuckled when I first saw it, but
then I thought, you know, it's really true. Kind of living in Ecotopia right here. We've got
hundreds of miles of premier hiking trails within an hour of our doorstep, perhaps even less
than that. We have biking opportunities. We have fishing and boating and we have pods of
orca is that sometimes can be seen from Seattle. The closest wolf pack is about an hour and a
half from here, hour and 15 minutes from here, so this is a pretty amazing place to be living
here in Washington state. On top of that we have some of our premier national parks here as
well. We have Mount Rainier National Park. We've got Olympic National Park, North Cascades,
some really amazing places that have been protected. But our mission here at National Parks
Conservation Association is that we're all about protecting our parks. In fact, our mission
specifically is to protect and enhance America's national parks for this and future generations.
We are not only concerned about protecting them for us. We are also concerned about leaving
a legacy for future generations as well. Stephen Mather was one of our primary founders of
NPCA back in 1919. In fact, Stephen was the first director of the National Park Service back in
1916 when that organization was formed in the government. Stephen realized that the parks
really needed an outside advocacy organization that was going to be interested in protecting
them for their best interests and for our best interests. So he and the gentleman to his left
there, Robert Sterling Yard, Robert was his publicity chief there at the National Park Service.
They got together with a couple of other folks and they created what was then the National
Parks Association back in 1919. But I think he really had a lot of vision because even today
there are many threats to our national parks and you kind of think about it in think they are
national parks. They are protected. They are, but there are many threats to them including, for
instance, underfunding. There's about an $11 billion backlog of maintenance projects that have
not been funded for our national parks across the country. Congress is doing a very good job of
continuing to ignore that. There are threats from air pollution, climate change and there are
threats of development as well. Here's another case where you go well, they are national
parks, right? They are protected, but there is oil and gas drilling and mining going on right up,
sometimes right up to the borders of some of our national parks in the West. There have
actually been bills that have been proposed on some sides of the house where it's been a
proposed to start drilling and mining within our national parks. There are a lot of threats. And
Stephen, I think, was really a visionary in trying to make sure that we do the right thing and we
protect these places. Here in the Northwest, in fact, I was going to briefly tell you a little bit
more about who we are. I told you about our mission, but we are about a 140 person
organization, roughly. About 24 different regional offices around the country. We have a DC
headquarters and we are nonprofit. We are not part of the government, so we are definitely a
501(c)(3). I'm thinking about my 401(k) there for a second. How did that happen? Anyway,
here in the Northwest we have an office here in Seattle. There are four staff including myself
and Shannon, Rob Smith, who is our regional director and Graham Taylor, who is our program
manager. We are specifically focused on Washington and Oregon. As you can see, there are 14
different park units in Washington including some of the places that we know and love, Rainier
National Park, Olympic National Park, North Cascades and also some places that you don't
know as much about or you may not be as much aware of that are part of the park system, the
national park system and that includes the Bainbridge Island Exclusion Memorial which really
recognizes and pays tribute to the Japanese-Americans who were actually put in internment
camps during World War II. The Manhattan Project, which is a new national park which was
just announced last December and that's going to be set up in the Hanford area to educate
people about the whole nuclear age and entering into the nuclear age and talking about the
development of those weapons back at that time and taking kind of a nonpartisan approach to
it and educating people about what happened there. And then in Oregon we focused on six
different park units including Crater Lake National Park and a few others. Today what we want
to do is I'm going to focus particularly on one national park and then Shannon is going to talk
about a couple of others. Specifically, I want to talk about North Cascades National Park. North
Cascades, as you'll find out in a few minutes, is one of the least visited parks in the state, if not
in the country. And it is one of the most beautiful and rugged places as well. The park service
has proposed that this might be prime habitat, a prime ecosystem to bring back the grizzly bear
and we'll talk more about that and our involvement in that particular project. First off, I'm
going to give you a little bit of an overview here of the North Cascades ecosystem. If you look
at it around in this huge red dotted line is the North Cascades ecosystem. It includes North
Cascades National Park. It includes Lake Chelan National Recreation Area. It includes a number
of wildernesses, Glacier Peak and others and comprises about 6 million acres. This is a very
rugged, mountainous beautiful place and it's the area where the park service thinks would
make the most sense to try to restore the grizzly bear population. What I want to do is talk of
little bit about that and why we think that makes sense. First off, North Cascades National Park,
which is part of that North Cascades ecosystem is a place that's becoming more and more
referred to as the wild nearby. It's one of those beautiful rugged places that in an hour and a
half you can be out on an amazing trail. What's interesting, too, is that the visitorship is pretty
low for such a beautiful gorgeous place. In 2014 are only 24,000 visitors to the park and we're
talking about 24,000 recreational visitors, so people that go there to hike or camp and enjoy the
park. Compare that, for instance, to Ross Lake National Rec Area, which is right next door,
725,000 recreational visitors every year and that was actually a 2013 number. But you can see
the dichotomy between the amount of visitorship that you see between those two areas is
really vast. North Cascades National Park has the most glaciers in the lower 48 states. A lot of
people don't know that, roughly 300 glaciers. Of course, some of them are melting more
rapidly because of climate change these days. It has some of the most rugged mountains in the
lower 48 as well. Let's take a look at this as grizzly bear habitat. Let's talk about that a little bit.
First, I should start off by saying that the grizzly bear does exist in the North Cascades, but their
numbers are incredibly diminished. They have gone from a population of 1000 bears maybe
100 years ago in Washington state and there may be 20 in the North Cascades if we are lucky.
There's another 30 or so bears that are located in the Selkirk Mountains in the Northeast of
Washington. But we are talking specifically about the North Cascades here, so roughly 20 bears
or less. The park service really wants to see that population brought back. This is actually a
picture of one of our bears in neighboring British Columbia. This guy was captured on film back
in 2010 on a remote camera at Manning Provincial Park. We know that they're there. It would
be in easy 10 or 15 mile walk for grizzly bear to walk into the North Cascades. We have just had
a very difficult time trying to detect how many there really are, so we know that the numbers
are pretty darn small.
>>: I wonder if they tripped the invisible wire system.
>> Paul Balle: The invisible wire system. The good thing is, of course, grizzly bears don't need
passports to go back and forth across the international line. But there are a few bears that are
making their way back and forth across the international border. In 2010 there were a number
of studies done trying to locate bears, trying to get a better sense of how many bears there are
in the North Cascades and we just don't really know and that's why we say 20 or less. But in
2010 hiker up that Cascades Pass in North Cascades took these pictures of a bear. If you look at
these pictures, what would you think? It looks like a grizzly bear, doesn't it? Look at the big
hump, the very distinctive hump that you usually see on a grizzly bear and it's a big bear, a big
animal. Twelve of 13 experts agreed that this is at least the first photographic evidence in years
that we may actually have some grizzly bears out there. And then if you look a few weeks later,
another hiker was up there in Cascades Pass and took this picture of this black bear, very big
black bear. Obviously, he has been working out. He's got a big hump on his back, so the
question is, was this bear on the top a grizzly bear or not. We don't know. We don't know for
sure. Again, it kind of harkens back to the fact that there are so few grizzly bears that we get
very excited when we think we may have seen one. Question?
>>: This is from someone online. Isn't it a part of the conservation for a different organization
who could trap and tag them or put radio transmitters on them so we could better track and
understand the population growth diminishing?
>> Paul Balle: We're not doing that so much with grizzly bears. They are doing that a lot with
black bears, tagging, collaring et cetera. If we could find a grizzly bear to the point where we
could trap it and tag it and collar it we would. But it has been so difficult to try to find them.
That's done with black bears quite a bit. In fact, that leads up to the next slide here. Some of
you may be asking if grizzly bears come back to the North Cascades, what's my risk of being
attacked or killed by a grizzly bear. I'm here to help set the record straight a little bit. First of
all, in North America there were about 600,000 black bears all across North America. We have
about 25,000 to 30,000 black bears that are actually here in Washington state. Grizzly bears in
all of North America, not that many, about 60,000. As I just talked about, we may have 20 or
less in the North Cascades. We may have about 30 in the Selkirks. Looking at the numbers
here, in the 1990s 29 people were killed by bears. It's interesting when you see how it breaks
out. Eighteen people were killed by grizzly bears, 11 by black bears. If you go out another
decade, the numbers actually dropped and there were nine people killed by grizzlies and the
number of black bears that killed people actually went up. What this says in general is whether
it's a grizzly bear or a black bear, there's a risk. But if you look at it and put it into perspective
here in this 22 year period down below, the risk is very low. 250 people were killed by dogs in
this 22 year period. 35,000 people a year are killed in auto accidents, so the risk of you actually
running into a grizzly bear and having a fatal altercation is pretty slim even if the population
does rebound in the North Cascades. Just kind of an interesting food for thought. NPCA as an
organization is involved in trying to educate people about grizzly bears and why it's important
to bring them back. I haven't really talked about that and that's why I wanted to take a second
and talk about how. First off, grizzly bears are kind of like an umbrella species. If grizzly bears
can survive and thrive in an ecosystem, you have a healthy ecosystem. First and foremost, they
are kind of an indicator species in that way. But they also do a number of things in the
ecosystem that actually provides benefits. First off, they do end up distributing seeds and
nutrients around and primarily through their poop is how they do it. Coastal bears that eat
salmon will actually spread nutrients around through the forest and bears in the interior which
are more referred to as grizzly bears will actually eat berries and other fruits that produce a lot
of seeds and so when they poop they are going to be pooping seeds and doing a kind of their
own Johnny Appleseed thing around in the ecosystem, which is actually helpful. They are also
natures Rototiller. They are out there trying to dig up roots and grubs and also to occasionally
get at a ground squirrel in a whole and they help till the soil. That's another benefit that they
provide to the ecosystem. On top of that, they also will occasionally eat carrion. They come
upon a carcass may be that was killed by a wolf werewolves or maybe a cougar and they will
actually take that carcass and take it apart and eat it. So they perform a number of benefits for
an ecosystem and this also brings me to a point which is useful in mentioning. Grizzly bears
primarily are herbivores. Technically, they are omnivores, but 80 to 90 percent of their diet
comes from sedges, grasses, roots, berries, those kinds of things, so they don't eat that much
meat. It's only about 10 percent of their diet or so. It's just an interesting point to make.
That's part of what we have been doing is going around the state and educating people about
grizzly bears, why they are important to the environment, as well as hopefully, imparting some
knowledge about how to coexist with grizzly bears out there. I'll just throw out a couple of
pointers right off the bat. I think I've got some hikers in the room and you know that if you are
in grizzly bear country the last thing that you want to do is hike by yourself. That is one of the
worst ways of potentially making yourself vulnerable to an attack. Bears are known that as the
number in the hiking party goes up the risk of an attack actually diminishes. For instance, the
guy that you heard about in Yellowstone a couple of months ago was traveling alone. And that
is one of the primary things you don't want to do in grizzly bear country. Always travel in
groups. Always make noise, make sure you carry bear spray and know how to use it. If it's
clipped to your belt and you don't know how to use the bear spray and you end up squirting
yourself, not a good thing. We definitely are trying to get around, particularly around the North
Cascades community and tell people about why bears are important and how to coexist with
them. We also had a series of presentations around in the North Cascades communities called
ghost bears and it was put on by Doctor Bill Gaines. He was the one that produced those
statistics that I showed you a minute ago, and he talked about the study that they did for a
number of years trying to document the existence of grizzly bears in the North Cascades and
they came up with very little if anything. No hair samples at all, no pictures of grizzly bears
from all the remote cameras that they had set up. That just tells you how scarce they really are
out there. So what's next? We're going to continue to talk around the community, go to
various events, talk about why grizzly bears are important to the North Cascades, but in terms
of the schedule, the environmental impact statement which is kind of the standard procedure
process that you have to go through that was decreed at the federal government level, the
study was initially announced back in 2014. Earlier this year there were some initial public
meetings for comments from people on how to understand how they felt about grizzly bears
and try to take some public record to get a sense of where people were at. That happened
earlier this year. Next year we expect that the National Park Service will actually issue a draft
environmental impact statement. The proposal that they make could range from don't do a
thing, leave the bears where they are and see if their numbers to increase, which is what we
have been doing for the past 20 to 25 years. And nothing has happened. In fact, the
population is diminishing as far as we know. It could range all the way up to the possibility of
restoring the population which might require some augmentation, maybe introducing some
bears into the system. We are expecting whatever their decision is, we are expecting it to come
out mid-next year and at that time the public will be able to comment on it and then a final
environmental impact statement will come out in 2017. That tells you a little bit about one of
our priority areas in the North Cascades. What I want to do is bring up Shannon and she is
going to talk about some other priority areas that we are working on in Washington state.
Shannon? And we have a little clicker here.
>> Shannon Brundle: Thank you. High. Thanks everyone for being here and thanks to all the
online people. Olympic National Park, one of our jewels in the Northwest, how many of you
have been to Olympic? Cool. So you all know what a special place this is. Olympic is one of the
most diverse parks in the entire system. It has coastal areas. It has inland. It has mountains. It
has the rain forest. In Washington it's our largest and most visited park. And it was created
through a tool that the president has, the Antiquities Act. It's a way that allows the president to
elevate public lands into monument status. That's how we have the Olympic park. The
Olympic park when you look at satellite images of it you can see that there is so much pressure
on the peninsula for logging that the only reason there are any trees out there is because they
are in the park, essentially. When you are out there and the border of the park is cut pretty
much right up to the park. That just shows how important it is to have these places protected.
The Elwha River dam removal, this is something that we worked on for a very long time. We
were involved in this process for over 20 years and we did all kinds of things in our involvement.
We worked with the rep who was Norm Dicks and we did a lot of lobbying with Norm Dicks.
We did a lot of presentations at the Elwha. We would bring people out, over 30 tours, and
show them the biodiversity out there and we would work with the scientists. The Elwha itself
as five of the native salmon species in it and since the dam has been removed those five species
have been returning to the upper areas and so that was something we focused on with
partnerships with a lot of conservation groups. We continue to work out there. The dam has
been removed. The project was complete but then they realized that there was a little bit of
dam that was remaining in the upper dam site and it was actually a barrier to the fish migration.
They didn't think there was going to be an issue but this last year the water levels were at
record low. They were so incredibly low that it was a barrier. So they are in there now. The
road was closed last week. I don't know if it's still closed this week, but they are taking out that
last little bit of dam to remove the last bit of barrier there. And a couple of boulders fell down
on top of it too, so they are clearing that out. And what we are doing at this time is, and we
have been doing this for years, but we take volunteers out to the Elwha and the Olympic
National Park. The park service as they were going into the project built these amazing
greenhouses out there and they started collecting native seed from all over the park because
they knew that once the reservoir was empty that non-native plants were going to spring up
like that and they wanted this area to come back and to be like it was before to maintain the
biological integrity of the areas. So they started planting thousands of seeds. They have huge
greenhouses and every year they plant and then they bring them out in November. So we go
with our volunteers and we work at the greenhouses replanting the plans and then we will go
out to the Elwha in November, which is coming up. So if you want to join us on that trip, it's
really fun. We pack out, wear packs, take the plants out to the river and plant them and it's just
a great way to see what's going on out there and the outstanding efforts of the park service in
collaboration with the lower Elwha Klamath Clallam tribe, what they are doing to get this River
restored to its historical level. This is a shot of the greenhouse and their scientists are
incredible. They have done a great job with this project. It's kind of running to the end of its
course now, so we'll see you what happens in the next couple of years if the funding continues
or what. And this is our group when we were out there last year. That is what the riverbed
looks like, the new exposed area, a lot of rocks. It's pretty harsh growing conditions, really.
And then at Mount Rainier we do every year we are up there for National Public Lands Day.
This is a picture from this year. We get a revegetation project in the old drive in campsite
there. The reason we do these projects is because we work on conservation. We work on park
protection, but we also work on connectivity, so it's really important to get people into the park
doing service projects and feeling that level of connectivity. This is my park; I belong here. This
is, my work is helping to make this a better place. And then this is in the North Cascades. We
go up there every June which is early for the park, as you know, probably that you can't access
a lot of it until a little later. We go the first week of June and work on one of the front country
trails, so that's always a good time. And it's a good time for volunteers to come out and work
directly with the park service and hear from them about what the issues with the parks are and
what the challenges are and what the successes are and we have a great working relationship
with the park service. And then we go out to the Olympic Coast. This is very near Kalaloch; it's
at South Beach and we do a coastal cleanup out there and we partner with other conservation
organizations. The coastal cleanup is put on by an organization called Cosavers and they're
made up of marine scientists and park service and a couple other organizations out there, but
it's the largest coastal cleanup in the state. Last year I think we removed 1500 tons of debris off
the coast, so it's really significant. It's not just on the park beaches, but there are people all the
way around the entire peninsula down to Long Beach on that day, so it's a lot of fun. That's my
main work with the organization. That's all I have, I think.
>>: Where is that picture?
>> Shannon Brundle: Crater Lake.
>> Patricia Donnellan: I want to remind the online folks to ask questions if they have them.
>> Paul Balle: Absolutely. Thank you, Shannon. That was great. Unfortunately, I haven't been
able to participate in one of those of volunteer projects, but I'm going next month, so I'm going
to get out there. I was also told to remind the folks who are online that if you would like to
submit a question feel free. Patricia is monitoring that so we can certainly answer your
questions if you have them. Hopefully we gave you a little bit better understanding of what
National Parks Conservation Association is all about. We are not part of the government. We
are a 501(c)(3) and we do a lot of great work advocating for our national parks. Really we just
kind of hit the tip of the iceberg of what we do here. We also do a lot of lobbying. We talked to
a lot of our government officials here in Washington state and we also talk to our senators and
representatives at the federal level as well. There's a lot of work that is going on behind the
scenes to make sure that our electeds are paying attention to our national parks, they
understand the issues and making sure that they vote the right way to help funding for our
parks. So speaking of funding, I did also want to make just a quick pitch. Of course it's the
giving campaign time of year and we are in the give tool, so if you are inclined and maybe you
want to take advantage of that 50 bucks that Microsoft is giving you and you want to make a
donation to NPCA or maybe you want to increase that or however you want to do it, we would
welcome your support and we would be grateful for your support. I just wanted to put in the
two cents there. What kind of questions do you have?
>>: New employees at Microsoft, what about the new employees.
>> Paul Balle: I forgot that little detail.
>>: They are all excited.
>> Paul Balle: For new employees you are given $50 that you can donate to whatever 501(c)(3)
you want.
>>: And also you can give $25 an hour for any of those projects that we went out on.
>> Paul Balle: That is correct. So Shannon talked about those volunteer projects. Microsoft
will pay us, NPCA, if you come out on an NPCA project $25 an hour for the time you put in.
That's pretty awesome stuff.
>>: Do you know which weekend in November they are doing that cleanup?
>> Paul Balle: What weekend in November are we doing that cleanup?
>>: The twentieth and the 21st.
>>: Right before Thanksgiving then?
>>: Uh-huh.
>> Paul Balle: So November 20 and 21st.
>>: I can send you the flyer.
>>: Why don't you do that and then Monica and I will make sure that it is distributed to anyone
that is invited.
>>: That's great. I would appreciate that.
>>: Additionally, Paul, the information that you shared, especially about the grizzlies, is really
interesting for those of us who camp. We have a somewhat abnormal fear of dying by bear,
like myself. Do you have information out at your website at the organizational level that
provides information about the grizzly bear population kind of speaking to the slides that you
were showing us? Is there a link to that?
>> Paul Balle: We do have some information up. We are in the middle of a revamp of our
website altogether, so I'm not 100 percent certain of what's up there, but I can certainly, if
need be, we can even share the slides or send some links when our website has been brought
back up to speed.
>>: It's supposed to be by next week.
>> Paul Balle: Is that it, next week?
>>: Is at a local version or a national version?
>> Paul Balle: We have a link to our local page from the national, and it's at NPCA.org. So next
week, hopefully, the new website will be unleashed. It's a good point, Patricia. It's not just
about hiking. It's about camping and one of the things that you should do, of course, and I
think every camper knows this is don't store food in your tent. A bear has a really, really
sensitive nose and if he smells something he likes and he smells that it's coming from that little
colored fabric house over there, he is going to go and check it out. Definitely you want to make
sure that you keep things either, either you hang your food or you put it in a bear proof
canister. Some wilderness areas actually, and national parks, that's the way you have to camp.
You have to take a bear proof canister with you to put your food in. As far as the actual grizzly
population, they are predicting that even if there is a restoration project that is put in place
where they actually bring in some bears, it's going to be over 100 years before they have what
they consider a sustainable grizzly bear population. Grizzly bears have anywhere from one to
three cubs. There's usually a 50 percent mortality rate, so there aren't a lot of bears that are
born that survive, and so it's going to take a long time for there to even be a population of 100
or 150 bears. It's going to take a while.
>>: Fifty percent mortality rate?
>> Paul Balle: Yes, 50 percent. And it's kind of scary. It's kind of scary if you are a bear cub.
>>: Yeah, kind of.
>> Paul Balle: Life is rough.
>>: Have they mentioned any numbers of how many they would try to move in?
>> Paul Balle: They have no idea.
>>: Would that be from Yellowstone?
>> Paul Balle: The earlier on introductions on certainly in Glacier and I think they did it in
Yellowstone also, some bears. But some of those are remnant populations that were left from
when the grizzly bears ranged from Alaska all the way down practically into Mexico back in the
day, but most of them were killed off during the Western expansion. There is data from reintroductions that have been done in some of the national parks and I'm sure if that's the
decision that's made that they will certainly be looking back at what was learned from some of
those other augmentations that happened previously. Hopefully here we are talking about at
least restoring a population that may already exist. There may only be five bears there, but
hopefully we can add a few bears to kind of make sure is that we have a viable population.
Question?
>>: What about the wolves? The wolf population is also pretty depleted. Are there plans to
introduce wolves, do you know?
>> Paul Balle: Wolves are actually, it's interesting. Wolves were actually reintroduced in
Yellowstone back in the mid-nineties and there have been some wolf introductions in Idaho, I
believe, as well over the years. And so what's happening here in Washington is we are seeing
the descendents of those wolves actually coming into Washington and they are also coming
from the north. They are also coming from British Columbia. So we're getting kind of an
expansion from the south and from the north. Right now the last I knew is we have roughly 15
packs of wolves here in Washington now. And a pack can be as few as three individuals, so it
really varies. As I mentioned, the closest wolf pack to us here is in the can away Teanaway and I
think one was recently killed. One was recently shot, but there may be only three or so
individuals in that pack now.
>>: Where is the Teanaway?
>> Paul Balle: The Teanaway area is right next to Cle Elum and Roslyn Washington, right up
there. So if you took 90 how to Cle Elum and then you just head a little bit farther east you are
up in the Teanaway. It's a beautiful area. It's kind of cool in a way that Washington state didn't
have to do anything. Wolves just came back of their own accord. The same thing happened
with wolverines. Wolverines were extirpated as were many of those carnivores back in the
1900s, but in the late eighties and nineties, we started seeing a few individuals actually showing
up in the Cascades. Basically, what they did is they are making their way back from British
Columbia down into Washington state, so there may be as many as a couple of dozen
wolverines in the North Cascades and in the mountains of Washington, which is kind of cool.
That's the other thing too, North Cascades National Park has all of these different critters in the
park, in the ecosystem that I showed you, but the one that is really suffering the most is the
grizzly bear just because reproduction rates are so low and there is a lot of development and
other things that they have to kind of pass through from British Columbia to get down into the
North Cascades of Washington. Letting it kind of take place on its own, so far that philosophy
hasn't worked, so we're crossing fingers that the park service makes a different decision, but
we don't know for sure. We are advocating for augmentation for restoration and we'll see
where it goes.
>>: To that point, Paul, the Olympic National Forest, if that's a natural habitat for grizzly bears,
would they have to supplant them there? Because they are probably not going to go on a bear
walkabout.
>> Paul Balle: They certainly wouldn't. I actually don't know a lot about the history of grizzlies
down in the Olympic Peninsula. Do you know, Shannon?
>>: I don't know either.
>> Paul Balle: I would guess there may have been some, but there may not have been a lot,
because it's always been a little bit isolated up there. I mean there were wolves there too. But
it's going to take a while for wolves to get back to the Olympic Peninsula. It's a pretty big
walkabout to get over there. I don't really know about the Peninsula. Question?
>>: If one is looking to volunteer what is the best place to find events and sign up?
>> Paul Balle: Shannon, what's the best place to sign up if someone is looking to volunteer or
should they e-mail you?
>> Shannon Brundle: You could e-mail me at sbrundle@npca.org and our website will be up
next week hopefully, but right now it's not. I don't have the events listed on there, so NPCA.org
is the website and you go to the Northwest and there is a little star for Seattle. You go in there
and all our events will be up hopefully next week. Until then, e-mail me directly and I can get
you the information that you need.
>> Paul Balle: Cool, great.
>>: [indiscernible] you mentioned [indiscernible]. I'm wondering into receptiveness of the land
and the water preservation fund [indiscernible] what is, I'm wondering if the organization does
something about it or do you coordinate it with a group of organizations. It seems like it's a big
thing that [indiscernible] don't even know that a lot of things have been bought up with that
money for public use like many trails outside of Seattle. You mentioned there's 100 miles of
trails within an hour. A lot of it was through them.
>> Paul Balle: Exactly. In fact, I was working for Conservation Northwest at the time of the
Cascades conservation partnership and we used the land and water conservation fund to buy
land to add to the forest service areas around Snoqualmie Pass. The land and water
conservation fund money is used by other organizations like Washington Wildlife and
Recreation Coalition and others as they advocate for adding lands to the public domain and
that money is used to buy those lands. Right now there is a threat to the Land and Water
Conservation Fund. In fact, this spigot has essentially been turned off. The funds still exist but
where the money normally comes from is from oil and gas drilling revenues, leases, lease
revenues. And so right now Congress has basically turned off the spigot and the funding
expired at the end of September. We are involved as are other organizations in trying to make
people aware of it and encouraging people to inform their congressional folks and folks in the
Senate as well, obviously, the same thing, but your House folks and your Senate folks to stand
up for the Land and Water Conservation Fund and see that it gets funded again because it does
a lot of good and it has added a number of great areas back to the public domain that were
previously in private hands. It's absolutely true and we are working on that. It's a difficult
issue. Unfortunately, there is a big contingent. We are nonpartisan, but there is a contingent in
the government right now that is working towards making sure that those monies go towards
other things, for instance, funding the training of energy workers, which, let's see. Should we
buy lands and add them to our public land domain or should we train energy workers? That is
just one example, but there are a number of things that Bishop is looking to funnel that money
towards instead of what it has primarily been used for in the past. We encourage you to
contact your representatives, contact your Senator and let them know that you think the Land
and Water Conservation Fund is important.
>>: That was just recently out, the mailing list.
>> Paul Balle: Yes. It was. We are trying to make people aware of it. Any other questions?
Anybody online have any other questions? Okay. Thank you so much for coming today. We
really appreciate your being here. We appreciate your interest. And Patricia, thank you very
much for standing in and being our host today. As I said today, Monica, we miss you and come
back soon. And thank you, Patricia, in the interim. We really appreciate your being here to kick
things off. Okay. Thank you very much. [applause].