Greetings from Eva, new Executive Director

Greetings Friends,  

I am honored to join you and the team in service to our incredible mission at Friends of the San Juans. I look forward to connecting with you soon!  

As I review our current work and learn about our history, I am inspired by the important and often hard choices our organization has made and informed. The San Juan Islands and Salish Sea bring front to mind wonderment, adventure, and respect for natural beauty, and call us to consider our sense of place and responsibility within it. 

As I share my new role with people who do not intimately know the San Juan Islands (as perhaps you do) they share what they do know—watching wildlife at Lime Kiln State Park or honeymooning in the islands. We all know how important it is to give Southern Resident killer whales their space, and that viewing them from shore at public places like Lime Kiln Point State Park is important. Imagine if Limekiln Village, a planned development for up to 300 units proposed in the 1980s, stood on the westside of San Juan Island for only some to enjoy. This is one of the many victories led by Friends of the San Juans that has benefited millions. 

Our work matters. It is guided by science and informed by intentional conversations and research. In an uncertain future, we need to be steadfast in examining policy, law, land use, and social impacts present in our decisions today. 

I will be on a Listening Tour over the next two months, and I welcome introductions to the people and places that make the San Juan Islands revered and renowned areas of beauty and natural wonder. If you have any recommendations for my visits, please let me know. I look forward to working with you to protect and preserve the San Juan Islands and the Salish Sea for people and nature!

In Partnership,
Eva Kathleen Schulte
Executive Director
Friends of the San Juans
eva[at]sanjuans.org
360-378-3991

I look at the Friends of the San Juans as sort of like a guard dog. They are the first ones to bark if there is any danger to anything that needs protection. They are the ones that make the first sounds that say “Wake Up!”

Shaun Hubbard

member, San Juan Island and Seattle