Hundreds of great blue herons will continue to have their home on Camano Island as the Island County Commissioners signed off on paperwork that provides $255,000 to help aquire the rookery property.
The money was provided after rookery supporters met an end-of-September deadline to raise a matching amount from private sources.
“We’re close enough. We’re announcing we raised the money,” said Pat Powell, Whidbey Camano Land Trust exectutive director, on Tuesday. A final plea for funds in mid-September received widespread media coverage, and Powell said that’s what made the difference.
Since the county originally approved its share of the funding earlier this summer, the Trust has worked to meet several requirements — the last of which was resolved during the Monday morning county commissioners meeting.
In an attempt to preserve some public access to the secluded rookery, the commissioners originally wanted a Web camera placed the property.
Powell said that it would be too expensive to install because a power source needs to be installed and Camano Island doesn’t yet have the cable service needed to provide the interactive feature.
“We were very clear in the application that there wasn’t going to be any public access to the site,” Powell said. “If we don’t secure the site, then we won’t see herons in the numbers we’ve been accustomed to.”
Other people in attendance said that people can view the herons by seeing them in areas outside the rookery.
“You can literally see hundreds of herons lined up as a picket fence,” John Eddison said, describing a scene at Camano’s English Boom county park. He is the property owner who’s selling his land to the trust to preserve the rookery.
Instead of requiring the Web cam, the county stipulated that the land trust should work toward installing one in the future.
In addition to the county money, the Trust had to come up with another $255,000 to purchase the 31-acres of rookery land.
Powell said people from throughout Island County and the entire region supported the cause, and they’ll be celebrated soon. “We’ll have a party,” she said.
