Submitted by KWIAHT

For Earth Day we imagined a Procession of Rare and Endangered Species of Lopez Island, sharing our concern that many rare and vulnerable species live on this small island with us, largely unrecognized, rather than faraway exotic places. We alone can ensure their survival.

At the head of the parade, moving with stately grace, is the Northwestern Salamander, a plumpish, chocolate colored amphibian that, within San Juan County, appears to be restricted to Lopez, including Lopez Hill, and wetlands that drain to Davis Bay, with a single sighting at Hummel Lake. These “terrestrial” salamanders spend most of their lives on land hunting worms, slugs, and insects, returning only once each year to their home pond to mate. It is possible that the entire Lopez population relies on a single home pond, making them very vulnerable.

Flying silently in circles over the head of the Northwestern Salamander is Townsend’s Big-Eared Bat, for all the world looking like a flying rabbit with its long, floppy pointed ears. About a tenth of all of the remaining Townsend’s Big-Eared Bats in Washington State live here on Lopez. It is unclear why these moth-eating mammals thrive on Lopez; what is unquestionable is that the entire statewide population is little more than a thousand and that they are very shy and often abandon a roost once humans have visited it.

Next in the procession is the Black Oystercatcher, looking for all the world like a crow with a bright orange carrot for a beak. There are currently only about 200 nesting pairs of these bold shorebirds in the entire Salish Sea, and several of them nest on small islets and rocks on the south shore of Lopez near Shark Reef, Iceberg Point, and Point Colville. Oystercatchers use those orange beaks to chisel limpets and mussels off inter-tidal rocks. Minks, otters, ravens and eagles snatch eggs and chicks when the adults are distracted—for example by human visitors.

A caravan of many-colored potted plants follows the Oystercatcher. We see the California Buttercup first, with its bright yellow flower: there are more California Buttercups on Lopez than there are in all of the rest of Washington State and British Columbia. We are its refuge within the Salish Sea. Next to the Buttercup is Showy Polemonium with dainty, frilly leaves and small, sky-blue flowers. There are only three left on Lopez. Together with a half-dozen other on Mount Constitution, they are the entire remaining population of this wildflower in the San Juan Islands. With them are the White-Topped Aster and a fuzzy-flowered Crazyweed, which in all the islands live only on Lopez. Indeed, our Crazyweed is found nowhere else in western Washington, and the Aster is considered a vulnerable species throughout its range (Oregon, Washington, and B.C.).

Resting on the California Buttercup is a small brown Moss’ Elfin Butterfly, with wings that look like frosted chocolate cake and large dark eyes. It is patchy and rare throughout the western states, and in the San Juan Islands has been seen at Shark Reef, where it lays its eggs on the Stonecrops growing on rocks overlooking the sea. If the Moss’ Elfin could speak, it would argue for demarcated trails and barriers at Shark Reef to protect the remaining native wildflowers there and keep humans from trampling the remaining Stonecrops off the rocks. How can people march for pandas and elephants, the Elfin might say, while destroying my home in the islands?

The flowers are followed by a swarm of tiny bees, black and brown and some as small as ants—over a hundred species, all of which are at risk from habitat destruction, use of pesticides, and the introduction of non-native mason and leafcutter bees. They carry tiny signs that read “Leave untidy edges!” and “Hooray for hedgerows!” and chant “Too many lawns!” Conspicuous amongst them is the Agapostemon, a bright metallic green bee of the shrinking dry wildflower meadows on the south end of Lopez. Its habitat is shrinking because shrubs, trees, and trails are taking over the remaining wild meadows and sea bluffs. Native people burned and cleared the meadows for millennia, but many present-day Lopezians seem to think it is “natural” to let them disappear.

We are nearing the end of the procession, and it is here we find summer visitors that nest elsewhere in the Salish Sea, but cannot survive without the herring and sand lance they catch in their beaks on the south end of Lopez: Marble Murrelets, Tufted Puffins, and Rhinoceros Auklets. Many of the Lopez seabird colonies that were documented in the 1980s have been abandoned, however, and fuel spills threaten the fish stocks that feed seabirds as well as Minke Whales and Harbor Porpoises, sea lions, migrating salmon, and Orcas in the islands.

In the very back of the procession, we imagine we see a few ghosts of recently lost species such as the Island Marble Butterfly (not actually a species, but a local population of the Large Marble of Eastern Washington), last seen on Lopez in 2011; the wonderfully warty Western Toad, last seen on Lopez (or anywhere else in the county) about 15 years ago; and loudly squawking, a Stellar’s Jay, once common on Lopez, now only an occasional visitor from Orcas Island, where it continues to thrive. (We omit the wolves and elk that were hunted out more than a century ago.)

Perhaps there is a crowd of spectator species that are secure for the present but may be threatened in the near future. Yellow Sand Verbena, growing on seaside dunes at Fisherman Bay Spit and McKaye Harbor, may succumb to higher, stormier seas within 25 years. Quaking Aspen, which is widespread on the mainland, is rare on Lopez and the only significant grove on is a part of Odlin South, the fate of which remains to be decided. Native Red-Legged Frogs have rebounded in recent years but remain patchy, dependent on disappearing small streams. Even native shrews and Townsend’s Chipmunks, although frequently seen, are being displaced by invasive rats. And the large greenish-brown Wandering Garter Snake, a strong swimmer that can reach three feet in length, appears to be retreating from developed parts of the island, unlike its smaller relatives that thrive in yards and gardens.

If we don’t recognize, appreciate, and accommodate the native wildlife and plants of this island, we are likely to continue losing them.