Does south Puget Sound prairie outweigh drive time?
Does it make sense to build a highway through what's left of Washington's remaining native oak woodland prairie, prime habitat for 19 plants and animals facing extinction, including streaked horned lark, water howellia, Mazama pocket gopher, and Taylor's checkerspot butterfly? Does it make any more sense when you add in that the highway won't do much for drive times or carbon emissions as our state is supposed to be making major changes to address climate change?
Prairie habitat like this is rare in WA, with only 3% of the historical range left in the state. One controversial highway could destroy it, if we don't act today. Photo: Rod Gilbert
Consider this. At a supposed "ground-breaking celebration" for the pie-in-the-sky Pierce County Cross-Base Highway, a baker's dozen activists showed up to remind lawmakers of the beautiful native prairie at risk for a project few people seem to want anyway.
The proposed highway would cut through the best piece of rare oak-woodland prairie remaining in Washington, where wildflower fields frame a looming Mount Rainier, and western gray squirrels, Mazama pocket gophers, horned larks, Mardon skipper butterflies, and many other butterflies make their homes. With only a pittance of the half-billion dollar price tag raised, the future of the highway is very much in doubt.
Many who live near the proposed highway politely raise the specter of "Destroy a prairie, for what?" As local business owner Jen Hanson wished aloud at the groundbreaking, "I hope today is the celebration of the end of the Cross-Base Highway." Last week, at a meeting of the Puget Sound Regional Council, even more people showed up to protest the highway and promote prairie protection. Our online action alert on the issue raised 160 comments in just 12 hours!
The Cross-Base Highway was first proposed a decade ago, and people like Jen and our members have protested and kept it at bay ever since.
It is no done deal. The money spent to date on the Phase 1 connector road was all that the project had. There is nothing earmarked to build the brand new lanes straight through the heart of one of the largest and last native Puget Sound prairies, and we are okay with that.
Why has the project stalled for so long? Maybe, just maybe, because it was and still is a poor plan, with little to gain and much to lose. The 6-mile, multi-lane freeway would cut through the heart of one of the last remaining oak-woodland prairies, destroying the hundreds of plants and animals there that depend on prairie, not pavement.
Is that price worth it to cut drive times by a few minutes, especially in a world projected to reach peak oil in a few more years? That's crazy talk, not to mention against the latest policy of the Washington Department of Transportation to reduce our reduce our transportation system's contributions to climate change and to protect and restore biodiversity.
As the wheels of "progress" keep spinning towards potential destruction for this unique habitat, biologists with Fort Lewis and the state have been busy reintroducing native frogs and other wildlife to the rare prairie. As part of the Sustainable Prisons project inmates lovingly raise endangered plants and animals up for release. But why introduce wildlife when you are just going to delete their habitat with a highway?
It's not a done deal, and we intend to keep it undone, with your help. The Puget Sound Regional Council could still remove the highway from its preferred projects for "Transportation 2040." Please send a letter today for the prairie and the wildlife and community members that need it! Thanks!
More of Rod's photos
How could we want a highway through here? So beautiful!