Each year at Cascadia conferences, satellite photos show a giant population pincer movement: Seattle-Puget Sound-area growth marches north, while British Columbia's densely settled lower mainland strains south against the border.
In between, Bellingham and Whatcom County have endured the questionable blessing of being touted on magazines' lists of "most livable" places.
The satellite pictures contain a single sizable splotch of green between Seattle and Vancouver. That's Chuckanut and Blanchard mountains, south of Bellingham, one place where the Cascades extend to salt water.
Aided by a public "strategies group," the state Department of Natural Resources has sought to develop "consensus management" plans for 4,800 acres of state-owned lands on Blanchard Mountain.
In seeking peace, however, the DNR has set off a nasty brawl among environmental activists in northwest Washington.
The landscape is worth scrapping over.
Depending on which way you look, Blanchard Mountain features eye-popping vistas out over the San Juan Islands or alpenglow sunset views of Mount Baker and the Twin Sisters.
Hang gliders launch themselves toward Skagit Valley lowlands. Hikers and backcountry horsemen use its trail system.
Near to the north, the Chuckanut coastline has introduced hundreds of schoolchildren to the natural world. Dr. Jerry Flora, a former Western Washington University president, hosted "Tidepool Critters" on local TV. Flora's beach walks drew crowds.
The kids grew into their teens and early 20s, whereupon they learned the wonders of the human body in its natural state at Teddy Bear Cove. The place had a rule long before Las Vegas made it a slogan: What happens at Teddy Bear Cove stays at Teddy Bear Cove.
A dream of the Bellingham area has been to protect Blanchard Mountain and link up its forests with Larrabee State Park and city and county parklands on Chuckanut Mountain.
"We have one DNR natural resource conservation area in Whatcom County totaling just 137 acres. It's nothing nearly as extensive as the Issaquah Alps," said Ken Wilcox, a conservation activist and trail planner.
In King and Snohomish counties, the DNR has set aside 42,000 acres as conservation areas, including popular trails on Tiger Mountain, Rattlesnake Mountain and Mount Si.
One problem: Blanchard Mountain is in Skagit County. The 4,800 acres are state trust lands, expected to provide timber production and dollars for local schools and services. As the DNR puts it in old-time logger jargon, Blanchard Mountain is a "working forest."
The "strategies group" produced a controversial compromise. It would create a 1,600-acre "core zone" emphasizing wildlife, vistas and non-motorized recreation. But some logging -- and construction of temporary logging roads -- would be allowed. Forests outside the core would be "harvested" in line with DNR statewide standards.
The plan vaguely links the future of state-owned Blanchard Mountain to pending decisions on what logging to allow on nearby Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest lands.
The cry of "sellout" has come from the venerable North Cascades Conservation Council.
Its journal, "The Wild Cascades," has an article by Wilcox decrying the proposed compromise. A previous issue ran a picture of Pierre Laval -- the Nazis' chief French collaborator in World War II -- as a model for sellout conservationists.
But Skagit County photographer-environmentalist Lee Mann sympathizes with the agreement. "It gets our nose in the tent," he said. "If the DNR does something bad, we can immediately call out to everyone from hang gliders to horsemen. 'Help!' 'Rape!' "
A veteran of the 1960s battle to create North Cascades National Park, Mann now sees threats greater than continued timber cutting.
"I fear us getting inundated with people more than I fear the logging industry," he said.
Big, showy and often unsightly homes are spreading up privately owned slopes of Chuckanut and Blanchard mountains. As is true in other "hot" spots of the West, the rich have not come to live in harmony with nature: They've come to be rich.
State Sen. Harriet Spanel, D-Bellingham, seconded Mann's fear. "I would rather have the timber industry than real estate development," she said.
In Seattle, some in the conservation movement have learned to make whoopee with old adversaries.
The latest report from the Cascade Land Conservancy features a picture of state Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland with Seattle legal nabob Gerry Johnson. Its pages list directors and advisers drawn from the timber and building industries and note an upcoming May 15 awards breakfast that will bring together "1,800 business leaders, elected officials and conservationists."
Based on past breakfasts, more corporate logos will be seen than on a promotion for the Olympics. Ads for Vulcan, Quadrant and The Boeing Co. pop up on the Conservancy Web site.
Old-line conservationists can feel their skin crawl. Yet, the conservancy has helped protect more than 140,000 acres in counties around Puget Sound.
Offered a half-loaf solution, advocates of a wild Blanchard Mountain face a Shakespearean dilemma: To deal or not to deal, that is the question.Seattle Post-Intelligencer
