Story by Katie McNabb

Western Washington University’s Outback Farm celebrated its 50th anniversary on May 21 and 22. “The Planet” sat down with two of the farm’s student coordinators, Cam Olsen-Roth and Kate Conway, to talk about the anniversary celebration, the farm’s history and some of their hopes for its future.

The celebration included bird-watching and interactive bee classes hosted by Fairhaven students and faculty. There was also a singer/songwriter competition, a brunch hosted by Outback Alumni and an info fair with some of the Outback partners, including the Queer Eco-Justice Club and the Leadership Institute.

Cam Olsen-Roth

What is your position at Outback Farm, and what does it entail?

CO: “I’m the community coordinator. What that means is I’m in charge of running the social media accounts, managing the community gardens and some of the other coordinators, I help run events; I have a larger duty at home to run the bigger events like the Fall Harvest Jubilee and the 50th anniversary.”

How did you first get involved with the farm?

CO: “In my first quarter at Western, in fall of 2019, I was in the Fairhaven dorms as part of the living learning community. I had to take all these classes with a bunch of other students that were living in the same dorm as me, and one of my classes was there [at the Outback Farm], right next to my dorm.”

“I got to know the farm manager, Terri Kempton, who ran the class. Towards the end of the quarter, I mentioned that I was looking for a work-study position and she said that I should do it for the farm when it opened up. I applied for that position and ended up getting it.”

What’s your favorite thing to do at the farm?

CO: “I definitely love giving tours. Like right now, I’m hosting the Leadership Institute and I gave them a tour of the farm and every Friday, we’ll host work parties just for them.”

“I think that’s really cool because I get to be with the same group of people, and I get to show them all the parts of the farm that I love, and then I get to do what I love.”

What do you think makes the Outback unique and a special place for Western students?

CO: “There’s not a lot of places on campus where you can go and be outside and interact with soil like you can on the farm. A lot of students find their own little niche place in their time at the farm. They could be there because they want to get their hands dirty and just start gardening on their own and get a plot.”

“The farm serves many different purposes other than just being a farm. I think that’s really what attracts students. It’s a great hangout place because people will just sit around and hang out all the time.”

Looking ahead, what are some of the goals for the farm in the next 50 years?

CO: “We have some short-term goals for the farm, such as redoing the contours of the garden beds. We also want to provide more food to students on campus and get main campus to notice us.”

“I think my big goal for the farm would definitely be for main campus to realize that the farm is here. I remember my freshman year, nobody from main campus knew that the farm was here and it was really sad.”

Kate Conway

What is your position at Outback Farm, and what does it entail?

KC: “I’m the permaculture coordinator. I’m responsible for managing the food forest and doing a fair bit of invasive plant removal. I also do some ecosystem restoration. We have a delineated wetland running through the middle of the farm, so part of my job is maintaining that space.”

“I think something that has characterized the Outback throughout time is we’re scrappy and always have been.”

— Kate Conway, permacultute coordinator

How did you first get involved at the farm?

KC: “I started by going to work parties, and I really liked it. After that, I ended up working at an organic vegetable farm out at Everson the following season.”

“The next summer, I started working at the Outback as a summer apprentice, then when that position ended I started this one as permaculture coordinator.”

What’s your favorite thing to do at the farm?

KC: “One of my favorite farm memories in the summer is just sitting in the raspberry patch, weeding and just eating handfuls of fresh raspberries. In the winter, eating lunch in the greenhouse is so nice because it’s cold and rainy outside, but it’s usually pretty warm in there.”

What do you think makes the Outback unique and a special place for Western students?

KC: “One of the biggest things that sticks out to me about the farm is that it is run by and for students. At a lot of other universities, the farms are not necessarily student-run, and a lot of the time the produce is sold to fund the farm.”

“At the Outback, we get to do what we see fit, and all the food that we produce goes to students for free, whether that be through the Fairhaven food pantry or other food pantries on campus, or during the summer we have free farmer’s markets. It’s a place that’s really for the benefit of students and the community.”

“There’s also so many different ways to get involved. I think almost anybody could find something they’re interested in at the Outback, whether that be farming, beekeeping, ecosystem restoration, natural building, chicken care or composting.”

Are there any pivotal moments in the Outback’s history that stand out to you?

KC: “Because it was started by students that were moving out of the dorms and just wanted to live on the land and grow their own food, there isn’t a ton of materials that the university has on the farm. It was very much, for lack of a better word, a grassroots movement.”

“There have been multiple attempts over the last 50 years by the university to turn it into a parking lot or construct dorms and there was obviously a lot of student pushback against that.”

“Eventually, the AS [Associated Students] recognized it as this legitimate thing and there was a student coordinator position created, so there was one student being paid to work at the farm. Then they added another coordinator position, and about four years ago, they hired a part-time farm manager, Terri Kempton. Now we have a farm manager, three student coordinator positions and five or so work-study positions.”

“We’re still kind of in this ambiguous state where we’re part of the university and recognized by the AS, but they also don’t really know what to do with us. That’s been a big struggle throughout time is the Outback being this weird, special little gem tucked behind Fairhaven. I think something that has characterized the Outback throughout time is we’re scrappy and always have been.”

What are some of the goals for the farm in the next 50 years?

KC: “The number one overarching goal has always been to increase our access to fresh healthy food as students and make that as widely available to our community as possible. It’s always a goal to produce more, but in a way that is sustainable in terms of the number of people we have working there and the size of the farm.”

“In terms of smaller goals, we want the farm to be more widely used by students and faculty. There’s a ton of great classes that are taught at the farm already, but from my perspective as a Fairhaven student and someone working at the farm, there’s a ton of interest.”

“I know that Terri has been working on a sustainable food systems minor. So it would be a goal to have a way for students to study food and food systems in a more straightforward way, which requires being funded by the university.”

Katie McNabb is a third-year at Western. She’s majoring in journalism and English with a creative writing emphasis. Her reporting focuses on science and the environment.

The Outback Farm’s 50th Anniversary: Q&A with Cam Olsen-Roth and Kate Conway was originally published in The Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Podcast by Max Owens

Salmon populations are in trouble, and hungry seals aren’t helping — but Kathleen McKeegan wants to know if an underwater boombox might be the solution. McKeegan, a researcher and graduate student in the Biology Department at Western Washington University, is testing whether Targeted Acoustic Startle Technology (TAST) may limit seal predation.

Along with researchers from the conservation nonprofit Oceans Initiative, she deployed the device, which works by emitting sounds that startle seals, at the mouth of Whatcom Creek. And while she’s still analyzing the results, the initial findings are promising.

Max Owens is a graduate student in Creative Writing at Western Washington University. He has written for publications like “Cascadia Daily News,” “Climbing” and “The Gulch.” This is his first podcast for “The Planet.”

The New Sound of Salmon Recovery was originally published in The Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Story by Katie McNabb

This story is a follow-up to a piece The Planet published in June 2021. Read the first story here.

Fifty years ago, amid the roar of boat engines, the booming of underwater bombs and the frantic calls of orcas, seven calves were stolen from the Salish Sea.

Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut, the sole surviving calf from that day, has lived at the Miami Seaquarium since 1970, but the fight for her return hasn’t let up. Now, the recent acquisition of the Miami Seaquarium by The Dolphin Company, the largest park operator in the U.S., brings new hope to the efforts to return Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut to the Salish Sea. The Dolphin Company purchased Seaquarium from Palace Entertainment, and the new ownership has arranged for Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut to receive a full health evaluation by a team of independent veterinarians for the first time in her life.

She was born in Puget Sound in the late 1960s to the southern resident population, only to be captured by Namu, Inc. in 1970 and sold to the Miami Seaquarium. She was renamed Tokitae ⎯ meaning “nice day, pretty colors” in the Salish Native American language ⎯ which was later switched to Lolita, placed in an 11-meter-wide tank ⎯ the smallest orca tank in the U.S. ⎯ and by 1987, she was the only remaining survivor of the 58 orcas that had been taken from the Puget Sound.

“Given their business model and given their interests, they’ve been willing to engage with those of us who are interested in understanding how to provide this remarkable whale with the highest quality of life going forward,” said Charles Vinick, the executive director of the Whale Sanctuary Project, a company committed to building sanctuaries designed to rehabilitate captured marine mammals in a natural ocean environment.

Vinick has a long history of working with whales, with two of his most prominent credentials including his work with the Cousteau family for over 25 years on various ocean education initiatives, as well as directing the Keiko Project, the famous effort to reintroduce into the wild the captive orca which the film “Free Willy” is based on.

Seaquarium’s new ownership has been more willing to work with the newly-formed nonprofit, Friends of Lolita and the mayor of Miami-Dade County, Danielle Levine Cava, Vinick said.

As part of both the mayor’s and The Dolphin Company’s commitment to seek better treatment for the animals at the Seaquarium, Mayor Cava announced on March 23, 2022, that a team of independent veterinarians and other experts would be performing a full evaluation of Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut’s physical and mental health. The evaluation has yet to occur but is in the process of being scheduled.

No individual staff members from The Dolphin Company could be reached, but a written statement from the media team was provided via email.

“Immediate steps have begun to increase support for the Miami Seaquarium including additional staff, providing training and continuing facility improvements,” The Dolphin Company said via an email. “These actions place the priority on an elevated level of supervision and accountability and giving the animal care specialists the resources necessary to provide uncompromising care.”

When the Seaquarium changed ownership, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service required new licensing to run the animal facilities, but the license they obtained in March 2022 excluded Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut and the stadium in which she’s housed, Vinick said.

This means she is not allowed to be placed on public display at the Seaquarium.

Mayor Cava also required the Miami County Parks and Recreation Department to have some authority over the Miami Seaquarium’s lease.

“So now there’s more oversight than there ever was under Palace Entertainment,” Vinick said. “The Dolphin Company is open to, and has, embraced the idea of our working with them to enable independent vets to come in and make a health evaluation.”

Vinick said this brings up a lot of legal questions surrounding the responsibility of Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut.

“We’re not at the stage of discussing, does she go home?” Vinick said.

Instead, the focus should be on Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut’s health and what’s best for her, especially after the U.S. Department of Agriculture published a “devastating report” on the Miami Seaquarium in June 2021, Vinick said.

The report detailed Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut’s treatment at the Seaquarium, as well as injuries and health problems she was presenting. Some highlights included her diet being decreased by 30 pounds despite an objection from the Attending Veterinarian (AV), recurring abnormalities in blood work, agitation caused by a lack of food and water and continuous strenuous training sessions even though she had an injury to her lower jaw.

Despite these reports, as well as others that expressed concern for the state of her health, she seemed to rebound in January 2022 and to be in good health when Vinick had a private visit with her in March, which was organized by The Dolphin Company.

“She is a remarkable whale,” Vinick said.

Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut is the oldest living whale in captivity, at 56-years-old, and she is the second oldest whale from the southern resident killer whale population, with the oldest hypothesized to be her mother, Ocean Sun L25, Vinick said.

Her long stint in captivity worries some who think Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut’s return to the Salish Sea would be detrimental to her health, said Howard Garrett, the president of the Orca Network, a non-profit organization in the Pacific Northwest focused on connecting people with whales.

“It’s accepted belief that it’s impossible, and for many, it would be true, but Toki is far more resourceful and courageous than almost any other orca,” Garrett said. “She’s still remarkably healthy, she still has all her teeth, and she hasn’t succumbed to repetitive neurotic or self-harming behavior at all. Her strength and resilience are amazing and should be recognized by permitting agencies, but I doubt that they are.”

Vinick said the decision of whether to move Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut back to the Salish Sea should be made “solely with her interests at heart.”

The Whale Sanctuary Project in partnership with the Lummi Nation and Sacred Lands Conservancy has drafted a comprehensive operation plan for moving Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut back to the Salish Sea.

In this plan, she would be placed in a protected area within the Salish Sea where she would receive continuous human care. The first step calls for an evaluation of her physical and behavioral health by a team of experts before any transportation occurs.

“There’s so much hope,” Vinick said. “All the work that Sacred Lands Conservancy has done stems from the cultural belief that she is a relative who lives beneath the waves, and it’s truly a part of their culture in every way.”

Vice President of The Sacred Lands Conservancy and Lummi tribal member, Squil-le-he-le (Raynell Morris), has been fighting to bring Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut back to the Salish Sea for over four years. She is currently in the process of suing the Miami Seaquarium, citing the violation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which calls for the return of “cultural items’’ to Native tribes. Squil-le-he-le could not be reached for comment.

“I think we all understand that we’ve got to have her welfare first and foremost in mind,” Vinick said. “So, every step of such a hope has to be done responsibly.”

Saving Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut: Captured Orca One Step Closer to Returning was originally published in The Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Story by Katie McNabb

Earth Week may be wrapping up, but residents looking to work out their green thumb still have plenty of opportunities to help the planet.

Over the past few days, volunteers have done habitat restoration, community art projects and stormwater discovery tours. Even the youngest community members are getting engaged thanks to the Animals Across the Earth project at the Whatcom Museum.

In March, the museum held a paper mâché workshop for kids where they used recycled paper to build a globe a little over a yard in diameter. That globe has been displayed in the lobby of the museum’s Lightcatcher building throughout Earth Week. Visitors of the museum can draw or create their own paper animals to stick to the globe.

Over the past few weeks, it has transformed into a menagerie of animals. Everything from colorful peacocks to cuddly panda bears dots the blue and green surface of the globe.

“The goal of the project is to help people of all ages celebrate the diversity of animals and people on earth, and to reinforce caring for the planet,” said Christina Classsen, the marketing and public relations manager for the Whatcom Museum.

Stefanie Cilinceon, the environmental education and outreach specialist for the City of Bellingham, said Earth Day provides an opportunity to appreciate and give back to the environment.

“Our goal with these events is to provide opportunities for community members of all ages to learn more about our planet and how to protect it,” Cilinceon said. “We’d like people to walk away from Earth Week with a deeper appreciation for and understanding of environmental protection.”

The museum will also be participating in the Mother Earth Day celebration on April 22 at Maritime Heritage Park, which is hosted by Children of the Setting Sun Productions.

The City of Bellingham is also hosting a climate action photo competition, where anyone can submit a photo that captures how the community is tackling climate change. Entries are due by Sunday, May 1, and the winner will be displayed in City Hall and included in a Downtown Gallery Walk event that takes place each year.

Some of the other events that took place in celebration of Earth Week were online Earth Day-themed “storytimes” in partnership with Bellingham Children’s Library, and habitat restoration community work parties.

Cilinceon said many of the opportunities the city offers during Earth Week continue beyond April 22, and the best way to stay up-to-date on those activities is to sign up for one of their newsletters.

A full list of the events can be found here.

Katie McNabb is a third-year at Western. She’s majoring in journalism and English with a creative writing emphasis. Her reporting focuses on science and the environment.

Earth Week Roundup: How You Can Get Involved was originally published in The Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Story by Shirley Zhou

On one sunny Saturday, people gathered in an inconspicuous parking lot on the corner of West Maplewood and Northwest avenues. The lot, owned by the Industrial Credit Union, sits empty on the weekends except for the row of folding tables and coolers filled with an assortment of fresh and pre-made foods. People flowed in and out of the lot, browsing and taking as much food as they needed.

On one row of tables, boxes filled with vegetables and fruits attracted most of the crowd. After looking through the produce, people perused the canned goods, proteins, soups and seed packages courtesy of the Salish Seed Guild, a local nonprofit organization that grows and stores plant seeds.

For the last six years, the Birchwood neighborhood — home to about 10,000 people — has suffered from a lack of accessible nutritious foods since the local Albertsons, the only grocery store in the neighborhood, closed.

With no other supermarkets within a mile radius, a group of neighbors and allies formed the Birchwood Food Desert Fighters. The group holds weekly food shares in the parking lot, sets up food boxes throughout the neighborhood and delivers groceries to senior, low-income apartments in Birchwood Manor.

“It’s something we started initially because the biggest thing that was missing was produce, so we started sharing plants and seeds through the neighborhood,” said Tina McKim, a leading organizer for the group.

No other grocery stores can take over Albertsons’ old building — the only space in the neighborhood big enough for a grocery store — due to Albertsons’ non-compete clause which prohibits any other supermarket from purchasing the building for the next 20 years.

This leaves Birchwood residents stranded in a food desert; or an area typically located in low-income neighborhoods where a substantial number of residents do not have access to a supermarket, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“It is a practice of cutting off food access to those who have the hardest time getting it,” McKim said.

Albertsons implemented a non-compete clause when the store first opened in the Park Manor Shopping Center. After Albertsons left, they sold the building to GGD Oakdale, a private equity firm in California, and added language to the deed to prohibit GGD Oakdale from changing the clause, McKim said.

Albertsons did not respond to a request for comment.

The main sources of food in Birchwood now come from convenience stores and restaurants where options are usually limited and highly processed. The closest grocery stores are Fred Meyer and Haggen which are a little over a mile away from Birchwood. This may seem like an insignificant distance, but for those who don’t have easy access to a car, it can be challenging to get groceries.

“I feel like if [the food desert] is something that had happened in Fairhaven, the city would be really aggressive about bringing a solution.”

— Kristina Michele Martens, Bellingham City Council’s at-large representative

“I used to walk to Albertsons just about every day, it was only a five-minute walk from my house. I knew the entire staff; they knew me, so it was a great loss that really hurt,” said Tim Casey, a regular volunteer for the Birchwood Food Desert Fighters who has lived in Bellingham for 35 years. “If somebody goes to buy a loaf of bread or milk, they have to spend $1 on the bus each way.”

Casey no longer drives, so he either takes the bus or embarks on the 30-minute walk to Fred Meyer which limits the number of groceries he can buy.

“If they have a gallon of milk on sale…. I can only buy one because I’m walking,” Casey said. “There’s certain items I need to ask a friend to drive me to get.”

The Birchwood Food Desert Fighters have become the main food source, giving away around 450 to 900 kilograms of food every Saturday, but their efforts can’t meet the full demand.

“What we’re doing isn’t enough because when you think about how busy a grocery store is, how much food there is and the relative amount of access to food, having a 24/7 grocery store versus [us being] open for an hour and a half on a Saturday, it’s totally not enough,” McKim said.

Although food shares provide support, people like Ivette Barnes — a Birchwood resident of two years — still have to travel to different stores to get all the food they need.

“It’s actually a little tough when you want something the little stores around here don’t have so then you have to drive to WinCo, but it depends on your financials,” Barnes said. “For me personally, with a family of five, it’s a little tough.”

If she forgets a certain item, she has to wait two weeks for her bi-weekly grocery run or for a time she happens to be near a store.

The Birchwood Food Desert Fighters’ efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. Since their formation in 2016, community organizations have reached out to offer support. Businesses and nonprofits like City Sprouts Farm, Calypso Kitchen and The Salvation Army regularly donate produce, pre-made foods and extra food, respectively.

In 2019, the Fighters successfully lobbied for an ordinance banning future non-compete clauses in Bellingham which didn’t affect the one already established by Albertsons. Now, they’re pushing for a new space in the neighborhood like a co-op, farmers market or another set up to provide long-term food access, McKim said.

Albertsons’ non-compete clause can only be challenged by an entity with legal standing, like another grocery store, said Kristina Michele Martens, Bellingham City Council’s at-large representative. So the Fighters and the city have little legal influence, she said.

“It’s amazing the amount of legal barriers that one company can put up to just dry a community’s access to food,” McKim said.

Martens is exploring options to bypass corporate barriers and put an end to the food desert. Mi Rancho Meat Market, a restaurant and market in Birchwood, has the infrastructure to become a larger store, and if the owners are on board, Martens said she thinks they may be the solution.

The Birchwood food desert is not just an issue of food access, it’s also an issue of racial justice.

Birchwood is home to many low-income households and English language learner (ELL) families. At Birchwood Elementary School, 55.1% of students are low-income and 22.3% are ELL, according to data from the Washington Office Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI). Just two kilometers away is Columbia Elementary School where only 1.6% of students are ELL and 23.5% come from low-income families, according to OSPI data.

“I feel like if [the food desert] is something that had happened in Fairhaven, the city would be really aggressive about bringing a solution,” Martens said.

At Fairhaven Middle School, 29.9% of students are low-income and 3.6% are English learners, according to OSPI data.

“Knowing the history of the Pacific Northwest and how homogenous Bellingham has really been for so long, [the city] just didn’t see the issues,” Martens said. “They weren’t aware of the issues so there hasn’t been a whole lot of representation for anyone who looks like the majority of people who live [in Birchwood].”

Even so, progress has been made in recognizing racial disparities in Bellingham.

Martens and the Chuckanut Health Foundation, have been working on establishing the Whatcom Racial Equity Commission. The Whatcom County Council will vote on the Whatcom Racial Equity Commission becoming a formal entity in June. If approved, the commission would examine government spending through a racial equity lens and provide feedback to other agencies.

Looking ahead, Martens is hopeful for change.

“I’ve personally seen local leaders really have their eyes opened to how race impacts everything that you do,” Martens said. “The local government is seeing it finally [and] understanding that [the Birchwood neighborhood] is such a diverse community of people that we can’t keep giving them white colonizer answers to issues they’re facing.”

Shirley Zhou is a junior environmental studies major with a passion for environmental justice. When she’s not working on schoolwork, she likes enjoying the outdoors, cooking and listening to music.

Bringing Life to the Desert was originally published in The Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Story by Katie McNabb

As the threat of climate change is growing more imminent, news publications are hiring environmental reporters, who cover the stories that impact the climate and those most closely tied to it.

“The Planet” sat down with Cascadia Daily News’ environmental reporter, Julia Lerner, to discuss her position at the paper and her views on environmental journalism.

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and the work that you do at Cascadia Daily News?

JL: “I cover local environmental issues, as well as I have taken on the indigenous issues and affairs beat.

So I’ll cover local tribal issues; I’ve covered a couple of the tribal elections, ongoing political issues there as well as environmental and climate things. Climate change is not a local issue by any means; climate change is happening all around us.

So we look at pipelines that are being built across the country. Here in Bellingham, we had a pipeline spill a couple decades ago, and so there are ways to localize most of these stories. So that’s kind of my job. I look at what’s happening, not just around us here in Bellingham and Whatcom [County], but all over the world.”

What does the day-to-day of your job look like?

JL: “I come in the morning, and I look at what’s happened in the last 24 hours, and there’s constant news happening around the world related to the climate, and it’s kind of just a question of how can I relate this back to our community?

So I’ll spend the first couple of hours taking notes, reading, making phone calls to locals. There’s a couple of really really valuable environmental nonprofits in the community who really have a lot of great knowledge and understanding so they’re usually my first calls. They might get annoyed at how often I call, but they just have great information for people who may not have that information.

So I’ll spend time making calls, sending emails, drafting, chatting with editors about what we have, here’s why it’s local and why it might be relevant to people; here’s where I’m thinking to go with the piece, and then it usually takes a couple of hours to draft and write out like a 500 or 600 word piece. So I usually can knock out two of those a day.”

How did you get into environmental reporting, specifically?

JL: “I actually didn’t start in environmental reporting. My undergraduate degree is in multi-platform journalism and my master’s is in investigative reporting.

So I really started looking at investigative processes, and one of the projects that I worked on as a grad student was related to how climate change was impacting military bases in Alaska, which was a really interesting project.

My first job after grad school was actually up in Alaska as well. So I started working at the Nome Nugget, Alaska’s oldest newspaper, and every story there is environmental. You can’t look at the things happening around you in Nome, Alaska, without also talking about the environmental impacts.

You know, there’s the dog sledding and mushing races, but those are changing because the ocean is warming. There’s gas prices rising up there and that’s because of the way the shipment of oil happens, and it has to change every year because of how sea ice patterns form. You can’t build houses because of permafrost, and there’s an entire village up near Nome that’s literally sinking into the ocean. You can’t talk about all of these things like building houses and roads and driving cars without acknowledging the climate impact on every single thing that’s happening there.

So that really pushed me into this environmental lens in my reporting, and I ended up here in Bellingham at the Cascadia Daily as the environmental reporter because I think they liked that. I looked at regular stories as environmental stories, and I looked at what might just be a city council meeting through the lens of climate, environment and how this impacts the indigenous communities around us.”

So, you said your master’s was in investigative reporting. Do you think there are a lot of intersections between investigative journalism and environmental journalism?

JL: “I think, in terms of analysis and understanding, it takes a lot of work, even on an everyday story.

For instance, yesterday I sat in on a city council meeting where they were talking about a wastewater treatment facility here in Bellingham, and it’s really easy to write “wastewater treatment facility in Bellingham”, but you still have to explain what that is. Environmental reporting always takes a lot of understanding and knowledge, and I think the investigative role plays really well into that.

There are a lot of big questions out there to be investigated. Like I mentioned, one of the first projects I did relating to climate change in the environment was how climate change is impacting military bases up north, and that’s a question that’s really easily applicable everywhere.

You can look in Arizona and say the environment has gotten so dry and so hot that airplanes can’t fly anymore down here. You can look into Alaska and say they’re trying to build a port up north, but the sea is frozen half the year. So how are they going? I think there are a lot of big questions like that though. You know, take time to research, to understand and figure out exactly how to present this as an issue and how to make sure when people read about it, they care about it.”

How do you decide what stories need to be covered and are worth your time?

JL: “A lot of it is community engagement related. What are people in the community talking about and looking at, and where is there some lack of clarity on some of these issues?

I see my role as explaining the science and reasons behind some of the decisions that are made at local and city and state levels. A lot of the stories I decide to write are related to meetings going on, things I’ve seen people post about on the internet.

People will reach out to me and say ‘Hey, did you hear that this boat caught on fire and now it’s sinking and oil is leaking into the ocean?’ It’s a lot of figuring out what other people are interested in.”

How do you find the balance between advocacy and being objective as an environmental reporter?

JL: “I think in the early days, it was maybe a little bit like all opinions and all sides get equal weight. I have come around to the idea that one of the Society of Professional Journalist’s guiding rules is ‘Seek truth and report it.’ I’m not going to spend time giving equal weight when there isn’t equal knowledge.”

If someone comes to me and says, ‘Why don’t you report on the fact that climate change is fake?’ It’s like, well, my job is to report the facts.

Some people may think this is advocacy and advocating on behalf of the climate and the environment when I see it as, ‘Here’s the science and here are the facts to back it up; here’s what’s really happening.’ They can choose to believe it or not, but the thing about science and facts are, it’s real, even if they don’t think so.

I don’t believe that, necessarily, voices deserve equal weight if they don’t have the facts and the knowledge to back it up. It’s not our job to promote false ideas, so I’m not going to do that.”

Do you think you need a strong background in environmental science to be an environmental reporter?

JL: “I think there’s definitely a learning curve, and a background in environmental science would probably be really helpful. I don’t have a degree in environmental science.

That said, I make sure that all of the science that I write about comes from people who do have that background and experience in environmental and climate issues. I just make sure that, whenever I make a claim, it comes from someone who does have that knowledge.

I think reporting on climate is very much like reporting on other beats in the sense that someone who is reporting on the police probably may not have a degree in criminal justice, but that doesn’t mean they can’t learn and understand the key players.

In your beat, you understand the people who have the knowledge and are willing to help you to understand, and it does take a little bit of work to kind of look at all of these stories through an environmental lens at first. You know, I can’t look at a story without saying, ‘What’s the environmental impact? How is this going to impact our carbon emissions?’ You start to learn what questions to ask.

I do think it’s important that a journalist has a good enough understanding in their subject to take these high-level ideas and the people with PhDs and master’s degrees in environmental science and distill them into stories that make sense to people without that background.”

What do you see as the future of environmental reporting, or what do you hope it will look like?

JL: “That’s a really good question. I think the direction we’re moving in, and I sort of hope we’re moving in, is that every reporter starts to look at themself as an environmental reporter.

With every story, there are always going to be questions about environmental or climate outcomes. It could have something to do with the cars we drive and carbon emissions, or it could have something to do with the city council meetings and deciding to continue meeting on Zoom versus in person; there are always environmental implications to every decision that’s made.

I would hope that all reporters moving forward start to ask those questions.

In fact, my Twitter cover photo says “Every journalist is a climate journalist. Every story is a climate story.” Because I genuinely believe that every story has environmental implications, and I’m hoping that, in the future, every journalist, be it a city hall reporter, education reporter, business reporter, they all will start to look at the beats and stories that they cover through an environmental lens.”

Katie McNabb is a third-year at Western. She’s majoring in journalism and English with a creative writing emphasis. Her reporting focuses on science and the environment.

We’re all Climate Journalists: A Conversation with Cascadia Daily News’s Julia Lerner was originally published in The Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Podcast by Catalina Lane

Catalina Lane is a senior at Western Washington University completing a double major in Environmental Education and Studio Art. She loves enjoying the outdoors, creating art and playing with her stubborn cat, Tiko.

All Alone Abalone was originally published in The Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Podcast by Augustine Vanden Brulle

Augustine Vanden Brulle is a Western Washington University student who is new to environmental reporting, but they hope to channel their interest into reporting on rivers and fisheries in the future.

Foreseeing Future Flows was originally published in The Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Story by Olivia Palmer

On most days, mountain bikers rush down Galbraith Mountain’s vast network of trails, winding through groves of evergreens and whipping around hairpin turns. For bikers like Grant Brinson, parking on the street below provokes a different adrenaline rush.

Like many cyclists accessing Galbraith from the south side, Brinson bypasses the perpetually full parking lot at Lake Padden Park and instead finds a spot on the side of Samish Way. Here, cars whizz past the road’s narrow shoulder as Brinson tries to wrangle his bike off the top of his car.

“There’s been some pretty close calls,” he said.

Brinson is one of many affected by the dangerous parking conditions along Samish Way. But as the final phase of parking lot expansion continues at Lake Padden Park, bikers like Brinson can look forward to at least 100 new, safe parking spots this spring.

The expansion, a partnership between the City of Bellingham and Whatcom Mountain Bike Coalition (WMBC), is scheduled to finish in May of 2022. WMBC Executive Director Eric Brown said he hopes the new lot, which will offer at least 140 parking spaces, will help remedy many of the hazards along Samish Way.

“We feel that if this doesn’t get done, it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when somebody gets hit,” Brown said.

Galbraith Mountain is owned by Janicki Logging. In 2018, the City of Bellingham signed an easement with Janicki, securing public recreational use of the land. Brown said WMBC initially planned to contribute $250,000 to the easement, but when the city came up with funds elsewhere, the organization was asked if it would be willing to help with the parking situation instead.

“At the end of the day, the trails on Galbraith are the reason why people are flocking to that area, and we felt a sense of duty and ownership,” Brown said.

Since then, WMBC has raised roughly $560,000 for the expansion project.

Last fall, Janicki partnered with the city and WMBC to cut down trees and clear up additional space at the Lake Padden parking lot. Trees not used for lumber were ground into wood chips to help stabilize the site, said Josh Neyman, the expansion’s project manager from Bellingham’s Parks and Recreation department. Now, after a winter-long pause due to weather, the project is back in full swing as the city and WMBC work with RAM Construction to excavate topsoil, finish construction and pave the lot.

Before the planned expansion, the Lake Padden parking lot offered about 25 spots, which filled up even on weekdays, Brinson said. That forced people to turn around or park on the street.

“Anybody who’s driven down Samish on a busy biking Saturday has seen the people in the road, or at least, barely off of the road — kids and families trying to get in and out of their cars,” Neyman said. “It’s pretty scary.”

On busy days, Brown said the shoulder can have as many as 100 cars on it. That reduces visibility for people trying to cross the street to access the mountain via Galbraith Lane and forces bicyclists to ride along the fog line. The situation isn’t helped by the fact that the area is on a hill and has no crosswalk, Neyman said.

Brown said these safety concerns are especially scary when going out with groups of children for after-school mountain biking programs.

“It’s honestly pretty treacherous when you’ve got seven-year-old kids who have their heads up in the stars… not really paying attention,” Brown said. “It’s probably the most dangerous part of our actual group rides with the kids.”

In 2015, Whatcom County reduced the speed limit from 50 mph to 35 mph on a portion of Samish Way. But speed reductions only did so much.

“It means instead of people going 70 like they used to, they’re going 50,” Brown said.

Brown said Whatcom County plans to install a high visibility crosswalk at Galbraith Lane. While he anticipates the new parking lot will accommodate most vehicles, he said some cars may still have to park on the roadway on busy weekends. In instances like these, there will also be no-parking zones at the crest of the hill near the crosswalk.

The parking lot expansion also points to a broader shift in the Bellingham mountain biking community.

Judy Tilley, who’s lived on Galbraith Lane for almost 40 years, said she remembers when all the mountain had to offer were jeep trails and a few logging roads. Now, mountain bikers flock to the 65-plus miles of trails that WMBC manages.

About a dozen years ago, Tilley and her husband Tony started letting a longtime mountain biking friend park on their property when he rode Galbraith. Before they knew it, the couple was overseeing what they’ve come to call “The Dollar Lot,” a registered business offering up to 30 parking spaces at $1 per adult at the end of their driveway. Most days, the lot is full.

Brown has noticed similar changes since WMBC has expanded trails on the south end of Galbraith Mountain.

“Numbers have grown exponentially,” Brown said. “I mean, I used to park on the south side on Galbraith Lane in the late 90s, early 2000s and there would be three or four cars. Everyone rode from town, nobody rode on the south side, there was no need for expanded parking.”

Today, Brown said mountain biking draws professional bikers, tourists and media writers for companies like Pinkbike, Beta and Red Bull to Bellingham. With three bike manufacturers, 16 bike shops and several component companies in the area, it’s no secret that the sport’s popularity has skyrocketed.

As the mountain biking community expands, concerns over capacity may arise — but so does the capacity to problem-solve.

Brown said the entire team of experts working on the Lake Padden parking lot expansion — from surveyors to wetland biologists to civil engineers to arborists — have been providing services pro bono.

“All these people are members of the WMBC … and they’ve said, ‘Hey, I’m willing to throw my hat in the ring on this and help out,’” Brown said.

To Neyman, WMBC’s success is because of its relationships. After working with WMBC on an initial project, he said the city couldn’t wait to partner on the next one.

“This is the next one,” Neyman said. “Hopefully, not the last one.”

Olivia Palmer is a third-year environmental journalism major who’s passionate about storytelling in my communities. She has written and edited for both The Front and The Planet, as well as contributed to a hyperlocal online Seattle newspaper. One of her favorite stories that she has written was on water adjudication in the Klamath Basin; the project involved interviews with a range of subjects, including tribal leaders, fish biologists and farmers. You can read the story in The Planet’s spring 2021 issue.

Good News at Galbraith Mountain was originally published in The Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Podcast by Olivia Palmer

For her master’s thesis, Sydne Tursky is talking to people about the things that they don’t talk about. Tursky, a second-year graduate student at Western Washington University’s College of the Environment, is working to understand the impacts of framing on white evangelical Christians’ views of climate policy. Last summer, she returned to her hometown of Van Buren, Arkansas to interview 25 white evangelical Christians about the environment. Her conversations gave her a window into a range of different worldviews and taught her some valuable lessons about what it means to master the long-forgotten art of talking to people you don’t agree with.

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Olivia Palmer is a third-year environmental journalism major who’s passionate about storytelling in my communities. She has written and edited for both The Front and The Planet, as well as contributed to a hyperlocal online Seattle newspaper. One of her favorite stories that she has written was on water adjudication in the Klamath Basin; the project involved interviews with a range of subjects, including tribal leaders, fish biologists and farmers. You can read the story in The Planet’s spring 2021 issue.

Crossing the Aisle for Mother Earth was originally published in The Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.