Friends of the San Juans

On April 4, seven local and regional environmental organizations appealed Skagit County’s approval of a project that would ship hundreds of millions of gallons of toxic chemicals through the Salish Sea every year, much of it destined for Asia. The groups maintain that the approval for the Tesoro (recently renamed Andeavor) Anacortes Refinery petrochemical expansion ... read more

After ten years of public service as Friends of the San Juans’ staff attorney, Kyle Loring will be leaving the organization in June to pursue other endeavors. Starting this month, Friends will conduct a search for a talented environmental attorney to serve the people and wildlife of the San Juans. Since Friends hired Kyle in ... read more

We’re excited to announce that Lovel Pratt has joined our team as the Director of Friends’ Marine Protection Program! Lovel comes to Friends from Mulno Cove Consulting, where her work focused on safe shipping advocacy, reducing vessel traffic impacts, and oil spill prevention. She is a founding member of San Juan Islanders for Safe Shipping. While ... read more

Friends of the San Juans Appeals the San Juan County Shoreline Master Program for Failure to Protect Orca, Salmon, Forage Fish and Beaches On December 22, the Friends of the San Juans (Friends) appealed San Juan County’s recently updated Shoreline Master Program (“SMP”) to the Washington Growth Management Hearings Board. The SMP is the primary ... read more

All of us at Friends of the San Juans are very appreciative of our members and partners as we reflect on 2017 – thank you for being part of our community who cares deeply for orca, salmon, clean water free of Atlantic salmon netpens and oilspill free oceans. We wanted to give you an update ... read more

A $50,000 matching gift has been provided by generous members for all donations received before December 31, 2017. Please double your impact with a gift today! Dear Supporter, Orcas are the icon of the Salish Sea and they are critically endangered. I remember when there were 98 Southern Resident orca whales in 1995. Now the ... read more

On November 28th, the Energy Council responsible for giving Governor Inslee a recommendation on how to proceed on the Vancouver, WA Tesoro Oil Terminal unanimously voted to disapprove the project. Why? Because year after year 300,000 citizens have demonstrated by showing up, giving testimony, and being part of this coalition that this project is simply too ... read more

Do you have a digital camera or camera phone? If so, 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. See below for this season’s King Tides (December 4 – January 7). ... read more

In May 2017, many of you wrote comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for Tesoro (now re-named Andeavor) Anacortes Refinery’s proposal to manufacture and export xylene to Asia. Xylene (pronounced ZIE-leen) is a highly volatile, hazardous and toxic petrochemical which has never before been manufactured in our region and transported through our waters. ... read more

Spawning habitat for the surf smelt, a small fish important in marine food webs, just got a whole lot better at a local beach thanks to the hard, and often muddy, work of public service organizations, contractors, landowners, community members and school kids. Over the past few weeks 600 linear feet of shoreline has been ... read more