Georgia Strait Alliance

The Georgia Strait Alliance, headquartered in Nanaimo, BC is BC's only environment group focused primarily on the waters of Georgia Strait. In the year 2000, GSA is celebrating its decade of work to protect and restore these coastal waters and promote sustainability in the region.

GSA is involved in a number of campaigns and programs, including:

. Orca Pass International Stewardship Area is a cross-border citizens effort to establish a marine protected area in the southern Gulf Islands/northern San Juans, to help restore declining fish stocks and other species. (See list below of participating groups in this project)
. distribution of GSA's new 16-page Guide to Green Boating, which gives recreational sail and power boaters many handy tips on how to reduce their impacts on the marine environment-helping to keep the water clean for all of us to enjoy. This fall and winter, GSA will be producing Green Boating signs for marinas in the Lower Mainland and Greater Victoria area as well.
. training and equipping teams of volunteer leaders in six communities on how to carry out monitoring of the plants and animals in the intertidal zone. This is giving local communities a handy tool for tracking the health of their shores and waters.
. working to get salmon farms to clean up their act. Industrial fish farming along our coast causes pollution and is endangering what's left of our wild Pacific salmon through continuing escapes of Atlantic salmon and the risk of disease transfer to wild fish. GSA is working to get closed containment, tighter regulations and enforcement, and more protection for wild salmon populations.
. working to stop pulp mill pollution, pulp sludge spreading and to get pulp mills to move to cleaner technologies-to protect our marine environment and the health of our communities.
. distributing GSA's new ToxicSmart resource guide and info kit to community groups around the region to enable them to undertake effective public education and outreach on reducing the household use of toxic chemicals. This summer GSA is doing a survey on household use of pesticides, and over the fall and winter they'll be offering ToxicSmart Home Visits in the Greater Victoria area-helping people to identify the toxic chemicals in their households and gardens and learn how to use safe, easy alternatives instead.

For more information on any of these programs or on GSA's other work and issues, see their website at www.GeorgiaStrait.org, call 250-753-3459 or email gsa@georgiastrait.org

People for Puget Sound

People for Puget Sound is a non-profit citizens group based in Seattle dedicated to educating and involving people in protecting and restoring the land and waters of Puget Sound and the Northwest Straits. They seek to eliminate contamination of these waters, to halt the destruction of natural habitats, and to sustain the Sound and Straits as a healthy source of people's livelihood, enjoyment and renewal. They seek to accomplish these goals by educating and involving communities in our shared responsibility, by holding ourselves and public officials accountable for carrying out commitments and enforcing laws and regulations, and by building cooperation among diverse groups and interests throughout the region.

Members receive the group's excellent newsletter, Sound & Straits, which is published in February, May, August and November.

Puget Soundkeeper Alliance

The goal of the Puget Soundkeeper Alliance (PSA) is to protect the waters of Puget Sound by tracking down and stopping polluters who abuse the Sound. The Soundkeeper accomplishes this goal by patrolling industrial waterways by boat, monitoring pollution discharge permits, initiating legal action, training citizens to recognize and report pollution, and providing technical assistance to businesses who want to reduce their discharge of hazardous waste into Puget Sound. Through its network of Baykeepers in Commencement Bay and the North Sound, PSA has trained over 200 kayakers to patrol urban bays, as a part of its Pollution Dectection Project, to monitor, dectect, and report water pollution incidents. For more information Web: www.pugetsoundkeeper.org Email: volunteer@pugetsoundkeeper.org or call 206-286-1309.

Oceans Blue Foundation

The Oceans Blue Foundation, located in Vancouver, BC is a Canadian environmental charity established in 1996 to maintain and enhance coastal environments through the delivery of education and awareness programs.

Oceans Blue Foundation focuses conservation efforts on encouraging environmentally responsible behaviour in activities related to travel and tourism through the development and identification of environmental standards-or 'best practices".

Oceans Blue Foundation develops practical programs in three distinct areas:

1. community participation programs, such as the annual Keep Vancouver Spectacular volunteer community clean-up, to foster long term local stewardship over coastal environments.
2. ongoing education and communication activities to raise awareness about the issues surrounding the conservation of coastal environments, including the development and distribution of 'best practice' guidelines, and the coordination of events and forums to build awareness and support for coastal conservation.
3. strategic planning tools and relationships to ensure the future conservation of coastal environments by creating change at the planning and policy levels.

Ocean Blue is participating in a Parks Canada effort to establish marine conservation zones in the Georgia Basin, and collaborating with British Columbia and Washington environmental groups to establish the first trans-border Marine Protected Area. Web: www.oceansblue.org Email: cmackie@oceansblue.org

The Living Oceans Society

The Living Oceans Society (LOS) is headquartered in the remote fishing community of Sointula, BC. LOS is committed to the preservation of marine biological diversity and creation of sustainable fisheries through the establishment of a network of marine protected areas and ecosystem management of our ocean. To ensure all stakeholders are part of marine conservation efforts LOS participates in multi-stakeholder processes, organizing workshops, and information sharing. Their main projects include:

Marine Protected Areas: LOS is busy compiling information from coast communities on suitable candidate sites for MPAs, employing GIS mapping.

Living Reef Project: LOS has teamed up with the Reef Environmental Education Foundation (REEF) to create the Living REEF Project which trains recreational SCUBA divers to identify and collect data about fish species to help scientists and conservationists better understand our ocean. For information, contact Susan Francis at LRP@livingoceans.org (250) 920-7567.

Oil & Gas: LOS helped to form the BC Alliance for the Preservation of the Offshore Oil and Gas Moratorium which now has forty conservation and labour groups as members. For more information contact Oonagh (oonagh@ livingoceans.org).

Sound & Straits Coalition: To symbolize the need to take an ecosystem approach to protecting and managing the Salish Sea, LOS is working with several other marine conservation groups to establish a transboundary marine protected area called Orca Pass. For more information contact Aaron Tinker at aaron@livingoceans.org, (206) 270-9488.

LOS's Fishy Cookbook: Arsenal Pulp Press is publishing their eco-cookbook Fish for Thought, scheduled for release in September 2000. This book educates consumers on how to purchase sustainably caught seafood. Contact author Karen Sommer at ksommer@livingoceans.org, (604) 973-6580.

Web: www.livingoceans.org

Canadian Parks & Wilderness Soc.

The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) was founded in 1963 and in that time has helped to protect over 350,000 square kilometres of threatened wilderness areas.

CPAWS-BC has been working since 1993 to advance MPAs in Pacific Canada. While continuing to work on the policy framework, CPAWS is focusing on a number of specific sites which contained significant marine values requiring protection, large areas that could be promoted as candidates for large, zoned MPAs. We have conducted in depth research on each of these sites using available information to document important marine values and current uses of these areas.

Since the spring of 1995, CPAWS-BC has been coordinating the west coast marine protected areas component of World Wildlife Fund Canada's Endangered Spaces Campaign.

Baja to Bering: The Baja to Bering Sea initiative (B2B) is a cooperative, tri-national initiative to maintain and restore biodiversity along the 20,000 kilometer stretch from Baja California in Mexico to the Bering Sea in Alaska, one of the world's most productive and diverse temperate marine environments. CPAWS is coordinating with scientists, communities, and conservation organizations, both government and non-government, in Mexico, the United States and Canada to join this tri-national effort. Our approach is to link a network of MPAs, together with other conservation efforts that will ensure the protection of fully functioning marine ecosystems, thereby ensuring the long-term survival of the full range of marine species. Contact: Keith Symington, Marine Spaces Coordinator, CPAWS-BC: #502-475 Howe St., Vancouver, BC V6C 2B3. Ph: 604-685-7445. Fax: 604-685-6449. Web: http://mypage.direct.ca/c/cpawsbc

The Friends of San Juans

The Friends of San Juans was born back in 1979 when a group of citizens concerned about development decided to work together, soon finding themselves in the courts advocating to protect environmentally sensitive areas against private or commercial development. They have blocked or postponed a number of development projects which have threatened the marine or shoreline environment in the San Juans, including a condominium village, shopping center, subdivision, marina and dock. In 1989, the Friends helped develop the San Juan Land Bank, providing a comprehensive community survey for the county regarding land conservation.

The Friends have also implemented the "Citizens Shoreline Inventory" to fill gaps in understanding the shorelines and to educate citizens about the importance of these habitats by launching a volunteer coastal monitoring program in the San Juan Islands.

CSI was created by People for Puget Sound and Adopt A Beach to address these needs throughout the Puget Sound. This program identifies critical habitats and other areas of the shoreline ecosystem that need further monitoring and/or protection. The Friends host Shoreline Stewardship Training sessions for CSI volunteers from throughout the San Juan Islands. The information collected by the stewards is stored together with information from volunteers from throughout the Puget Sound at People for Puget Sound. The resulting Citizens Shoreline Atlas (http://www.pugetsound.org/csi/csa.html) has become the most comprehensive citizen-based, nearshore habitat assessment of its kind in Washington State. Contact: PO Box 1344 Friday Harbor WA. 98250. Phone: (360) 378-2319. Fax: (360) 378-2324

Washington Water Trails

Washington Water Trails Association (WWTA) is a non-profit collaboration of people who love to travel and enjoy the world by small boats. WWTA works to build partnerships with both public and private organizations to create and manage water trails, instill a strong stewardship ethic for the aquatic environment, and encourage the use of local 'blueways' for learning more about Washington's special places.

Washington Water Trails, the National Parks and various local partners have been working for two years on a Lakes-to-Locks Water Trail, a 'blue trail' with over 100 miles of shoreline to explore and over 100 launch and landing sites for hand-carried, human-powered boats.

This freshwater trail stretches from the Eastside's Lake Sammamish, north along the Sammamish River, around Lake Washington, through the Montlake Cut to Lake Union, and then west to the Chittenden Locks and a saltwater connection with Puget Sound's Cascadia Marine Trail.

For more information, contact the WWTA office at 206-545-9161, or visit www.wwta.org. In BC, contact Ecomarine 604-689-7575 for information about the BC Marine Trail.