In our opinion: Conserving shoreline

Talk to the staff at the Vashon-Maury Island Land Trust, and you find that they’ve been pushing hard for the last few years, working on one small deal after another to take advantage of a remarkable opportunity.

It was an opportunity that initially was bittersweet. King County and the land trust — with the help of Sen. Patty Murray — secured millions of dollars in conservation funds to try to negotiate a deal to buy out Glacier Northwest’s mammoth mine on Maury Island. The negotiations fell apart, Glacier walked from the table, and the county and its partners were left wondering what to do with more than $7 million.

Thankfully for us Islanders, they didn’t dither long.

Now, a few years — and many deals — later, some of Vashon’s last best stretches of shoreline are in public ownership.

Habitat for forage fish — the basis for the Sound’s complex food chain — is protected. Life-sustaining eelgrass beds are preserved. And a few prized pieces of real estate are now open to the public.

It’s not the end to the Glacier mine, an albatross that weighs on our Island. But it’s still a remarkable achievement on an Island that boasts some of the last best marine habitat in central Puget Sound.

The land trust’s staff intends to now go into planning mode, working to figure out what’s next. But we hope they find some time to relish an impressive body of work — and that Islanders take time to appreciate some lovely stretches of Vashon that are now in public ownership.

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