Friends of the San Juans

Winter is here and the Italian Arum invaders are coming. We need your help to get rid of this invasive plant on Lopez Island!  Starting as early as December, Arum sent up single leaves. Take a look at the first two photos to see what you should be looking for. You may find just one, which indicates that it is a ... read more

Do you know what a tardigrade is? If not, it’s time to find out! It could soon become Washington State’s official micro-animal thanks to a partnership between students at Friday Harbor High School, Riverday School in Spokane, Jefferson Middle School in Olympia, along with Lynn Bahrych from the San Juan Islands Conservation District, and Katie ... read more

We walked into 2020 with some great accomplishments. Thank you for joining with us to protect and restore the San Juan Islands and Salish Sea in 2019! Here’s what we achieved together recently: Forage fish spawn on 3 new restored beaches on Shaw Island! Three recently completed beach restoration efforts with private landowners along Blind Bay ... read more

Do you have a digital camera or camera phone? If so, you can help local and regional researchers capture this year’s king tides! Join Friends and King Tide volunteers from your community and across the globe to document the year’s highest tides by taking photos of your favorite local shorelines. A “king tide” is the highest predicted high tide of the year ... read more

Victory in the Salish Sea! Xylene will NOT be manufactured and exported from the Anacortes refinery! An additional 120 tank vessel transits will NOT impact Southern Resident orcas, our economy, our marine ecosystem, and shoreline communities with increased vessel noise and the increased risk of accidents and spills. [NOTE: not just oil spills – xylene spills ... read more

On August 29, 2019, Friends of the San Juans appealed Whatcom County’s conditional approval of a 300,000-barrel external floating roof crude oil storage tank and an 80,000-barrel external floating roof fuel oil storage tank in a tank farm located within the Phillips 66 Ferndale Refinery. On behalf of Friends members and the 73 living Southern ... read more

What do you see? This image contains a hidden a future. The fine grains of sand on this beach can sustain thousands of forage fish eggs – these eggs will become the small fish that sustain the Chinook salmon, that sustain the endangered Southern Resident orcas. It’s your donation that will ensure that the future ... read more

The Southern Resident Killer Whales (SRKW) need your voice and support! Their designated critical habitat is being revised and expanded to include the marine waters from the U.S. international border with Canada at the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, south to Point Sur, California. Friends supports the proposed revision of the Critical Habitat Designation ... read more

We finished our fourth and final 40th anniversary celebration in Seattle on November 8! We are honored to protect what we all love about the San Juan Islands and the Salish Sea with the help of our awesome community! Thank you for your continued support!

We are happy to report a successful outcome to the bold legal action we took against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 2018. They will now have to give more scrutiny to sea walls, bulkheads or other armoring in the Salish Sea. This is a very important ruling for forage fish – who feed ... read more