Snohomish County’s effort to build a public gun range near Sultan has hit a snag: a reclusive, threatened seabird called the marbled murrelet.
Experts say the birds nest high in old evergreen trees 25 miles or more from Puget Sound.
The majority of the county’s commuters head to King County every day, and so do the murrelets. The birds nest in fir and hemlock trees as far as 30 miles inland and fly to salt water to forage for their food.
Evidence of marbled murrelet nests and droppings was found this summer by consultants working for the Snohomish County parks department. The birds have been listed as a threatened species since 1992.
The parks department is exploring how to build a public shooting range on land along Sultan Basin Road. Park officials have never seen marbled murrelets during park projects, said Marc Krandel, county parks planning supervisor.
A $61,000 survey is now needed to learn if the birds live in the trees. The Snohomish County Council approved spending the money on Wednesday.
If marbled murrelets are found, their effect would depend on where they live on the gun range site, Krandel said.
“If it’s in the wrong place on the site, it could be a showstopper,” he said. “If it’s in the part of the site where it’s significantly buffered from any impact, it might not be a showstopper.”
Shooters have lobbied for a public shooting range since the 1960s, said Bob Heirman, president of the Snohomish County Sportsmen’s Association. If push comes to shove, the shooting range should prevail, he said.
| The marbled murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus) is a diving seabird.
Habitat: They live along the Pacific Coast from Alaska to central California. Nest: They breed and build nests on large limbs in trees up to 150 feet high within 30 miles of the coastline. Food: They dive for small schooling fish day and night. Population: Approximately 617,500. Source: National Audubon Society |
“If marbled murrelets are in there, I would be extremely surprised,” Heirman said.
“There are hundreds of square miles of bird habitat out there. I really don’t know about marbled murrelets, but I think we have enough habitat that the loss of any … habitat in that area would not be that great,” he said.
The county has considered a public shooting range for decades, but only recently settled on seeking 140 acres of state-owned forestland, Krandel said.
County Councilman Jeff Sax said the effort has “languished.”
“There’s a lot of inappropriate shooting going on in the county, including the Sultan basin,” Krandel said.
Makeshift gun ranges have resulted in trash in areas along Sultan Basin Road and prompted the County Council to expand no-shooting areas there in July 2004.
“Some people don’t think there’s a problem shooting in gravel pits or the woods, but they’ve mowed trees with gunfire and endangered lives,” Krandel said.
“Hopefully, a public range will have enough attraction and allow people to do the kinds of shooting they’re looking to do, and attract people to use the range and stay out of unsafe situations.”
The County Council has debated the issue since at least 1998. It spent $151,000 in 1999 to study a joint gun range with the sheriff’s office. Cost estimates once pegged construction of a joint shooting range at $3 million, Krandel said. The project likely will be cheaper now that the sheriff’s office plans its own range, he said.
Biologists plan to look for marbled murrelets next summer and report their findings to the county by the end of 2006.
Rick Hoskin, a member of the Snohomish Sportsmen’s Club, said he wouldn’t know a marbled murrelet if he saw one. He wonders if finding threatened bird species isn’t an attempt to stall the range project.
“There’s always a dead end somewhere,” Hoskin said. “It’s kind of like the owl thing. Find one, and you’re pretty much shut down.”
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