Whidbey environmentalists have made good on their threat to file legal action against Island County after commissioners’ adoption of a “bare minimum” fish and wildlife ordinance.

“With a lot of stuff they just went through the motions,” said Steve Erickson of Whidbey Environmental Action Network (or WEAN) Monday. “Whenever the county is confronted with something like this, they just delay, delay, delay.”

Erickson has accused the board of commissioners of creating a weak ordinance that runs afoul of the state’s Growth Management Act which mandates periodic updates.

For that reason, WEAN appealed the new county fish and wildlife habitat conservation ordinance to the Growth Management Hearings Board Nov. 13. This petition is the first step a long appeal process that can take up to six months before a decision is reached.

Dave Wechner, director of Island County Planning and Community Development, said this week that he believes the county did meet the state’s standards. Also, the regulations were drafted using a $250,000 grant that specifically called for a technical advisory group made up of state and private entities, one of which was WEAN.

“WEAN was at the table … on what to include and what not to include,” Wechner said.

Other Whidbey-based groups that participated include the Whidbey Island Conservation District, Orca Network and the Whidbey Audubon Society. Several state agencies were involved as well, from the departments of fish and wildlife, to ecology and natural resources.

This is not the first time WEAN has taken action against the county over environmental protections.

The group challenged the county’s across-the-board exemption of wetlands on farmland in 2000 and the Hearings Board agreed.

The county’s critical areas ordinances, including the fish and wildlife components, were supposed to be updated by 2005, but it wasn’t completed in time. WEAN then filed a petition in 2006 asking a court to compel the county to update its regulations according to state law.

After a lengthy appeals process, a Thurston County judge agreed with WEAN earlier this year that the county’s two critical areas ordinances had to be revised.

Now that the revisions have been completed, Erickson said the county has fallen short of the GMA requirements. Specifically, Erickson said the county fails to protect critical areas by again allowing an exemption for some streams involved in agriculture.

“They kind of went below the bottom floor there,” Erickson said.

WEAN’s latest petition is critical of the county’s lack of protections for the rare animals and habitat like Western Toad and endangered prairies.

“Letting species and habitats that are already in trouble, like the Western Toad and native prairies, decline further until they’re extinct is stealing from our kids,” said Erickson in a new release.

The petition also pans the county’s exemption for the removal of beaver and beaver dams, and takes issue with a number of the definitions including those for “regulated” and “non-regulated” streams.

WEAN is asking the hearings board to rule that the county failed to comply with state requirements, invalidate the offending regulations and order the county to become compliant within six months of the final decision.

“Nature doesn’t need us,” said WEAN member Marianne Edain in the press release. “We need nature.”