COER Charitable

As nearly 3 billion birds disappear across our nation --- military jets arrive in Puget Sound. Instead of the familiar songs and lyrical tweets of birds heralding the arrival of Spring, the roar of jet engines can be heard from Victoria, Canada, throughout the San Juans to Port Angeles, Port Townsend, the Olympic Peninsula, Whidbey Island and the OKanagan Valley. 

Noise pollution may not seem like a big deal but birds rely heavily on signing to communicate. Birdsong is used to attract mates, defend territory, and warn predators. This means that a bird’s ability to be heard plays a direct role in its reproductive interactions and survival. Bird song sound travels long distances when there is little wind and excess noise.

The most destructive noise in our Northwest Puget Sound airspace is the jet noise from the Navy’s EA-18G Growler. Their overflights occur over our fragile shorelines, active marshes, wetlands, flyways, wildlife refuges, National and State parks, Reserves, Monuments and Preserves. These critical habitats, developed over generations of time, offer little or no protection to birds or other species from jet noise overflights.

COER’s mission is to defend the health, welfare, and history of human and animal communities in the Pacific Northwest threatened by naval jet warfare training.  Each of COER’s projects and priorities revolve around this increasing military jet noise, while make connections with other issues like climate change, social justice, human health impacts, harm to children’s learning, over-all degradation of our environment, and extinction of species.  

Marbled Murrelet nesting Our work is urgent. This is a critical time for our planet, and for the world we will leave our children. Saving endangered species and habitats requires our action and change. COER believes that we can limit military jet noise and save a critically endangered coastal sea bird, like the Marbled Murrelet. In the mossy platforms of the tallest old growth trees, Marbled Murrelets nest. These small seabirds – auks, in the same family as puffins and murres – have seen serious population declines in recent years. It is our current focus to save this small coastal seabird from extinction. By reducing jet noise, we can preserve habitat and individual birds so they can thrive into the future. If we don’t act now – the Marbled Murrelet will be gone forever.

For decades, Northwest Washington communities partnered with the military to do their part for national security while respectfully sharing the same countryside, airspace, and waters. Today, however, the United States Navy is needlessly assaulting Puget Sound’s ecosystems and degrading critical habitats and disappearing our birds with their jet noise. Moving jets to other West Coast military locations was supported by a recent public survey and by a Department of Defense Siting Study.

In Northwest Washington’s Puget Sound and the waters -- known as the Salish Sea -- living communities are being battered daily by ear-shattering jet noise. Countrysides and airspace are no longer shared.

The impacts of 118 jets training over 150 days per year for consecutive hours include deafening noise that is harming these vast networks of inter-connected biological communities. If we do nothing, we will see more empty nests. It’s sad and heartbreaking to consider! The Navy has many options for jet training locations. The Marbled Murrelet has few options. At the top of the list --- is to stop the harmful military jet noise as quickly as possible.  With help, we can turn heartbreak into action ... and a future that will include the songs of this Washington seabird, the Marbled Murrelet.

Help us achieve our vision ... to return to a quiet, serene, peaceful soundscape where diversity of life, communities, and habitats can thrive without harmful noise from military jets.