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Tens of thousands of birds touch down here.
Rhinoceros auklets. Tufted puffins. Purple martins. Pigeon guillemots. Pelagic cormorants. Great horned owls. Bald eagles. Glaucous-winged gulls.
Protection Island is a national wildlife refuge because its bluffs provide some of the Salish Sea’s last undeveloped habitat for burrow-nesting seabirds. It’s especially crucial for breeding pairs of auklets.
Dark gray with rhino-like horns, white stripes and orange bills, the puffin relatives hunt sand lance and herring in the water around the island, then return to their burrows at night to feed their chicks under the cover of darkness.
But the birds don’t answer phone calls. They don’t drive an old van up the gravel road that connects the island’s rocky beach and its windswept plateau. They don’t philosophize or crack jokes like Marty Bluewater.
So when Ron Allen approaches Protection Island by boat, bouncing across the waves from Sequim on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, he phones ahead and asks the island’s lone human resident to pick him up.
“Hey Marty,” says Allen, longtime chairman of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, stepping off the dock. “Hey Ron,” Bluewater replies, reaching for a hug.
It’s an overcast morning in June and I’ve come to Protection Island with Allen because I’m interested in a project he’s working on.
He wants Congress to transfer ownership of therefugefrom the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to his tribe, along with the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge, an extraordinary expanse of sand and water located nearby.
The Jamestown tribe is already co-managing the refuges with the feds. Transferring them would give the tribe more control over their continued preservation and could set a precedent for other Native American nations to make similar moves.
U.S. Rep. Emily Randall has been working with the tribe to develop legislation and some Olympic Peninsula residents are voicing support.
Some other residents are opposing the change, however, arguing it would place public lands in private hands and put natural resources at risk.
Discussion surged at community meetings this summer as local government leaders considered whether to endorse the tribe’s idea and heard concerns about the tribe's plans for commercial shellfish harvesting.
It’s a debate about the birds that nest on Protection Island and shelter behind Dungeness Spit with seals, salmon, eel grass and oysters.
It’s also a story about people. Politicians. Environmentalists. Ancestors.
About Bluewater, who bought his Protection Island lot when he was still young, thinking it would make a swell vacation spot. His own slice of heaven.
And about Allen, who became Jamestown’s leader 50 years ago, determined to build the tribe’s political and economic security. To reclaim its sovereignty.
379 acres of solitude and nature
Out on Protection Island, Bluewater revs up his bench-seat van, a maroon behemoth of a vehicle he bought secondhand from a church group.
Harbor seals pop their heads out of the water to check out the engine’s growl and swallows exchange laserlike calls through gentle rain.
Seventy percent of the Salish Sea’s breeding seabirds nest here, including Washington’s largest glaucous-winged gull colony and some of its last tufted puffins, toylike birds that have disappeared almost everywhere else.
Under federal rules designed to leave the animals undisturbed, the 379-acre island is closed to the public and boats must stay 200 yards away. Bluewater and Allen are some of the only people allowed to visit.
Bracketed by sand spits and guarded by bluffs that resemble ramparts, the yellow-green island looms out of the Strait of Juan de Fuca like an abandoned castle.
“We’ll just cruise around a bit,” Bluewater,78, tells us as his van climbs the steep slope that leads from the island’s dock to the prairie above.
Bluewater’s parents met at an Indian boarding school in Oklahoma but raised him mostly in Washington, where he learned to love all things aquatic.
Days after graduating from college, he heard about an unusual island near Sequim with subdivisions for sale. Real estate investors had acquired Protection Island and were developing it as a summer-cabin getaway.
It was 1971. Flying there with his wife at the time in an airplane chartered by the developers, Bluewater watched the sun break through a layer of clouds, bathing the island in light.
“I was sold before we landed,” the he recalls.
Bluewater paid $7,000 for a vacant lot with a view and started constructing a little home. Hundreds of people like him were buying properties.
But the island was isolated, with limited access to drinking water, Bluewater says, and the development plan was “kind of a harebrained scheme.”
As it began to falter, environmentalists saw an opportunity. They had been monitoring the island for years, having recognized its importance for seabird breeding. Next they focused their attention on Washington, D.C., lobbying Congress to preserve the birds’ burrows.
Lorna Smith remembers the effort because she worked on it as a volunteer with the Seattle Audubon Society (now known as Birds Connect Seattle). “That was in the era of paying for long distance phone calls and having to send mail back and forth, precomputer,” Smith says.
The phone calls and letters paid off in 1982, when Congress decided to buy the island and make it a national wildlife refuge, similar to the refuge President Woodrow Wilson had established at Dungeness Spit in 1915.
Most of the island’s lot owners agreed to sell, but Bluewater chose a different option. For a lower price, the feds let him keep his property and continue using it for the rest of his life.
Once he dies, his lot will belong to the refuge. Until then, he’s a man alone, perched on the edge of a bluff in a cabin festooned with feathers.
“My dream was to retire here,” says Bluewater, who lived in Seattle during his career as a parks administrator and Woodland Park Zoo business manager. “Somehow, I was able to make it work.”
The island's history
Allen gazes out a window as Bluewater's van bumps along the spine of Protection Island, following the grassy ruts of an unpaved road. Bluewater has lost other vehicles to rust out here, so he’s taking good care of this one.
“The good news? It’ll outlast me. The bad news? It’ll outlast me,” he quips.
A black-tailed deer hops away from the vehicle, disappearing into the brush of the island’s undulating prairie. A gull waddles across the road.
I ask about the history of this place.
Before non-Indigenous people arrived in the area, Allen’s ancestors visited the tidal zone around the island to dig for oysters, clams and geoducks.
“They canoed all over the place,” and the island was a short paddle away from a prominent village, the Jamestown chairman, 78, says.
When the English explorer George Vancouver encountered the island in 1792, he described it as “enchantingly beautiful,” topped by a meadow of luxuriant grass and abundant flowers, plus a “coppice of pine trees and shrubs.”
But the landscape changed over subsequent generations, as newcomers planted crops and grazed livestock on the plateau. In the 1930s, a scientist introduced ring-necked pheasants in order to study them in isolation. During World War II, the U.S. Navy used the island for artillery practice.
Over those generations, S’Klallam people had their sovereignty whittled away. They ceded their traditional lands under pressure from settlers in the 1800s, were displaced from their hunting and fishing grounds, and for more than a century went unrecognized by the U.S. government for a period because they wouldn’t move to a reservation.
Not until 1981 did the triberesecure federal recognition, with Allen leading the way as chairman. By then, Protection Island’s quixotic developers had bulldozed parts of the meadow for roads and an airplane landing strip.
Although the island retained a haunting beauty, invasive grasses had overwhelmed its native plants and exacerbated the erosion of its bluffs.
As it became a wildlife refuge, Allen was working on other projects, crisscrossing the country to learn from other Native nations and strengthen his tribe's governmental foundations.
When he became chairman in 1977, the Jamestown S'Klallam had no revenue and no reservation. Now the tribe's annual budget exceeds $100 million, it operates a variety of businesses and it owns or controls about 2,000 acres.
Allen says he's logged 2.5 million air miles. He met Bluewater many years ago through the Seattle-based United Indians of All Tribes Foundation, when Bluewater was its executive director and Allen was on the board.
“Living in airports and going to and from different Indian meetings,” he says. “I would joke that wherever two or more Indians are gathering, I’ll be there.”
Allen plans to retire soon. But he wants to get the wildlife refuges transferred before he goes.
A different vantage point
Bluewater steers his van to the east side of the island and points across the water to a cluster of well-appointed homes on a wooded hillside.
The marina below the homes is where he moors when he visits the mainland. He stays there in his boat or an RV every few days and uses it as a base for other travels.
“That’s Cape George,” Bluewater says. “It’s kind of my second home.”
Smith, who helped preserve Protection Island for birds and other wildlife, has lived in Cape George since 2012. She can see the island from her house, she tells me by phone.
Smith supports the co-management agreement the Jamestown tribe signed with Fish and Wildlife in 2024 for Protection Island and Dungeness, putting the tribe in charge of activities like habitat restoration and public education. She and some other community members are objecting to the transfers, however.
“Carving up the refuge system would be bad,” Smith says. “The tribe brings their own background, expertise and Indigenous knowledge to the table that we welcome. But public lands should stay in public hands.”
Smith’s grandparents were lighthouse keepers on Dungeness Spit way back in the early 1900s, and she has volunteered in the same role more recently.
Since moving to Cape George, she and her husband have contributed to seabird surveys around Protection Island, counting and photographing the various species by boat.
They send me an array of images.
An auklet feeding its chicks; a pigeon guillemot catching a shiner perch; a red-billed Heermann’s gull feasting on sand lance after migrating 2,000 miles from the Gulf of California.
“So my history is long and my interest is deep,” Smith says, explaining why she has felt compelled to share her apprehensions about the possible transfers at a meeting in her Cape George community and online.
Any additional human activity on Protection Island could disrupt its animals, says Smith, a state wildlife commissioner separately involved in other environmental-political disputes. There’s also a broader picture, beyond these particular refuges.
“What about Olympic National Park? Clearly those were Indigenous lands,” Smith says. “All our national parks. Where does this end? I’m sure I’m living right here and now in an area that was part of a tribal settlement.”
Shellfish farming raises concerns
Bluewater executes a three-point turn, then motors toward the other side of Protection Island with one eye on the road and one eye on the sky.
He keeps binoculars in his van, grabbing them when a bird catches his attention. He’s noticed a boom in the island’s eagle population.
“There used to be a lot of cormorants, which I just loved,” Bluewater says, shrugging his shoulders. “The eagles chased them away.”
Slate-blue waves roll into the distance as we clamber out of the van and peer west. In that direction is Jamestown, where a group of S’Klallam people bought land in 1874. Beyond Jamestown is the one of the longest sand spits in the world, stretching more than five miles along the coast.
Darlene Schanfald has been making excursions to Dungeness refuge and its namesake arc since she moved to Sequim. That was 40 years ago.
“It’s wide open. Fresh air. The chance to see different birds. To identify them and see when they’re coming back,” says Schanfald, who chairs a local nonprofit called Protect the Peninsula’s Future. “It’s so special.”
Even before Allen started pushing for Dungeness to be transferred, Schanald’s organization was locked in a conflict with the Jamestown tribe, which recently resumed growing oysters commercially next to the refuge.
Protect the Peninsula’s Future and two other nonprofits sued Fish and Wildlife in 2023, accusing the federal agency of neglecting its responsibility to determine whether the tribe’s oyster farm is compatible with the 773-acre refuge.
The tribe has sought to intervene in the lawsuit, which involves a tangle of jurisdictional strands. The farm is located on tidelands owned by Washington and leased to the tribe. The site is covered by a federal easement for the refuge but the tribe and others have grown oysters there before. It had to shut down its operation in 2005, due to upland pollution into Dungeness Bay.
Schanfald says the renewed farming will damage the refuge’s habitat as it expands, partly because the tribe can grow nonnative Pacific oysters in anchored plastic bags. She says the bags can “smother the benthic (bottom-dwelling) life under them” and shift the way the sand moves.
Allen and the tribe’s biologists argue the operation will be small and environmentally benign. The tribe considered using plastic bags but has shifted away from that approach in favor of loose traditional seeding, he says. Pacific oysters?
“Oysters are oysters, for crying out loud,” the Jamestown chairman says.
Schanfald suspects the refuge transfers are a ploy to sidestep Fish and Wildlife’s oversight. Allen rejects that characterization, saying they would have no effect on the tribe's oyster farm, although he admits to chafing against layers of red tape.
The Jamestown tribe has spent significant time and money to help improve the bay’s water quality since 2005, he says. It has obtained permits from other federal, state and county agencies to grow shellfish there once again. It wants to move forward.
“We’ve proven we’re good stewards,” Allen says. “You’ve got critics on the sidelines thinking they’re smarter than the people actually doing the work.”
How a transfer may work
There’s a cartoon clown sticker with a red diagonal slash on the dashboard of Bluewater’s van. He slapped it there decades ago as a visual reminder for friends visiting Protection Island: Don’t clown around.
“You don’t want to do anything really stupid here, because the hospital is a long way away,” he says, parking next to his quirky island abode and ushering us inside.
The home boasts picture windows and a wraparound deck decorated with driftwood. Solar panels power the kitchen appliances. A wood stove provides heat. Eagle feathers hang from the ceiling.
Bluewater built the place himself, expanding the structure and making improvements over time. His friends come often for social gatherings.
The island can get loud, because of all the birds. The first night Bluewater spent on his own, he was startled awake by tapping at his windows.
“I look over. It’s a seagull,” he says. “I’m a little weirded out by that still.”
When the birds leave in the winter, the island goes quiet. Then storm clouds swirl across the strait. Bluewater likes to watch them come and go.
This secluded place has become “something I treasure,” Bluewater says, and it’s something the Jamestribe tribe can safeguard, Allen assures him.
As part of its 2024 co-management agreement (which is currently up for renewal), the tribe has repaired the road to the island’s marina and is accelerating the removal of nonnative plants. At Dungeness, the tribe has expanded an effort to remove invasive European crabs, grown the refuge’s volunteer base and updated its signage.
Under the tribe’s transfer proposal, Protection Island would remain closed to visitors, while public access at Dungeness would be maintained.
The refuges would be held for the tribe in trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and they would continue to be preserved and managed as refuges, Allen says, with funding contributed by both the feds and the tribe.
The Jamestown tribe's natural resources department can do the job better than an overstretched Fish and Wildlife, Allen contends. Based on what Bluewater has seen, he concurs. He supports the plan.
The transfers would be modeled on a 2020 law that restored the 18,000-acre National Bison Range in Montana to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes; Congress had taken the range from the tribes’ reservation in 1908. The tribes took back full control in 2022.
Allen describes the Protection and Dungeness proposal as part of his tribe’s broader campaign to revive the whole Dungeness basin. His ancestors harvested shellfish in the area for millennia. They used part of Dungeness Spit as a burial ground.
“It’s not just symbolic,” the Jamestown chairman says. “It was our territory. Part of our traditional homelands.”
Politics come into play
Bluewater and Allen have stopped bantering as they bump back down the road to Protection Island’s marina. They’re thinking about what’s to come.
To make the refuge transfers happen, the Jamestown tribe needs politicians like Randall and U.S. Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray to shepherd a bill through Congress.
That could be a heavy lift, I realize as I learn more about the process. Although Randall is working with the tribe, no legislation has been drafted yet, according to the U.S. representative’s office.
It’s why Allen went public with the concept this spring, asking local government neighbors to support the tribe’s proposal.
The idea attracted attention right away and scored an early endorsement from the Sequim City Council. A local Audubon chapter has shared optimism.
As critics warned against the transfers (including the leader of a group called the Clallam Freedom Alliance), other residents expressed admiration for the tribe’s environmental and community endeavors.
“They’ve always been great neighbors,” John Bridge, a leading Olympic Peninsula conservationist and retired teacher told the Sequim council. “They’ve proven that over and over.”
The Jefferson and Clallam county commissions have taken a more cautious tack, however, delaying action to hear more voices and details.
Protection Island is in Jefferson County. Dungeness is in Clallam County. Petitions for and against the transfers have collected more than 3,000 signatures. Local news outlets have published letters to the editor.
“We’d like to wait and see” what the legislation says before taking a position on the transfers, Clallam Commissioner Mark Ozias tells me.
The county commissions don’t have any direct say in the matter, but they’re political weather vanes. Murray is “closely following” the local discussion, a spokesperson says. Cantwell didn’t comment.
Some environmentalists may worry the transfers would align with President Donald Trump’s quest to sell off public lands to business interests.
Yet Randall, a Democrat who represents the Olympic Peninsula, says they could make sense partly because the Trump administration has gutted federal agencies like Fish and Wildlife with staffing cuts.
“It’s important that we listen and work with tribal leaders to find opportunities … when we can’t trust this administration,” Randall says.
Allen sees the transfers as a chance for Jamestown to blaze a trail for other tribes. It’s a moment of truth for the Native “land back” movement, says Jefferson County Commissioner Greg Brotherton, who supports the transfers.
“This is a bigger conversation than just us and Protection Island,” adds his colleague, Commissioner Heidi Eisenhour, who has adopted a neutral stance.
The last words
The debate is about birds. Seals, salmon, eel grass and oysters.
About people. Politicians. Environmentalists. Ancestors.
About Allen, contemplating his legacy out on Protection Island.
And Bluewater, waving goodbye from the dock.
“My main concern is the island being protected forever. It’s such a beautiful, priceless place,” he says. “There’s nothing else like it.”
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