Op-Ed: To Save Trees and Orcas Build More Homes in Seattle

Cars and sprawl are the true problem for marine ecosystems near Seattle.

Another avoidable death has come to the Puget Sound. Seven years after Tahlequah lost her orca calf and took its body on a tour of the Salish Sea, she recently birthed – and lost – another calf.

Tahlequah and her calves are victims of decades of human decisions to destroy forests, pave natural lands, and destroy salmon runs in order to house people in car-dependent sprawl. The climate pollution spewed by generations of commuters living far from their jobs adds to the crisis by raising temperatures and imperiling salmon runs, as does the runoff from all the cars driving around the region. 

It didn’t have to be this way. For several decades scientists and policymakers have understood that greater urban density is essential to reducing climate pollution, protecting forests and salmon runs, and helping our Southern Resident orcas and the salmon runs they depend on to recover.

Each time our state and local governments attempt to make it easier to protect trees and salmon and orcas by building more urban infill housing, local housing opponents emerge to find some reason to stop it – while sprawl continues to gobble up more and more of Western Washington. 

We saw it again at the January 6th meeting when the Seattle City Council Select Committee took up the mayor’s “One Seattle” growth plan, at the February 5th hearing, and in the appeals. Not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) activists argued that new urban density would harm trees and orcas, when in reality it’s their opposition that is driving car-centric sprawl and fueling the causes of their suffering.

It’s worth remembering that NIMBY arguments against urban density are well outside the mainstream of climate policy, and by the same token, not all of the people advocating for trees are against density. No less respected a source than the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report specifically namechecks urban density as a key strategy for reducing emissions and transportation pollution. 

It’s time we reclaim the facts – and implement policies that will actually help our natural environment, while also making it easier for humans to afford to live here.

To bring back the salmon and the orcas, we need to better protect salmon habitat including adopting and enforcing wider buffers on rivers and streams. We can de-pave areas in key watersheds, increasing tree canopy in public rights of way that the City controls in the process.

Cities are crucial to protecting our environment by reducing carbon emissions through slashing vehicle miles traveled, providing robust public transit to do so, reducing the tire particles poisoning our fish, orcas and other wildlife, and other environmental impacts of cars and sprawl. When we aren’t doing our part as a city to plan for smart, livable cities, and communities, trees and orcas suffer. 

The arguments leveled against infill housing density don’t stand up to even basic scrutiny. Research proves that Seattle’s urban tree canopy is not threatened by development. It is the climate crisis that is stressing our older, taller trees. Whether it is the heat dome of 2021 or the long drought of 2022, the warming globe is the true menace to our urban forest. The best thing we can do for Seattle’s trees is to undo the sprawl and car dependence that provoked the climate crisis in the first place and build more housing in the city itself. 

We can preserve and retain the tree canopy to cool and nourish our dense, walkable neighborhoods, and save the trees outside the city from being clear cut for sprawl. We can build an emerald green city for all that has a specific and targeted approach towards tree retention, housing density and transit expansion that meets everyone’s needs.

If we give in to anti-housing activism and scale back the proposed upzones, we will simply worsen the existing crisis. People will still move to Western Washington. But if Seattle puts up the gates, new residents will move to places nearby that don’t have the environmental protections and concentrated walkable amenities that Seattle has, at the cost of our forests and farmlands. 

We will continue to see climate refugees coming from areas facing even higher stakes crises and displacement, whether that’s wildfires, hurricanes, or flooding. We can and must make room, and ensure that we have enough housing for all and at affordable enough prices that no one is outside, especially during extreme weather. 

The “One Seattle” Comprehensive Plan is a crucial opportunity at an urgent moment to plan for the projected growth of the next 20 years and how we’ll manage that – and do so with a vision that reflects Seattle’s progressive values, including climate action and protection of the trees and orcas who share our region. We cannot continue to destroy our wildlands and farmlands statewide for resource intensive and destructive sprawl. Unless we’re willing to watch as more orca calves die and as their mothers grieve.

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