Meet the Candidates

Kirk Prindle, Seattle

I am running for King Conservation District Board of Supervisors because I believe the District would be better served by having more technical expertise and pertinent experience-based knowledge on the Board.

In difficult economic times, funding for conservation and environmental protection, unfortunately, often gets squeezed. Now more than ever, it is imperative that KCD have experienced leaders on the Board with the technical understanding to be able to identify viable projects, and to prioritize limited funds, energy and effort to effective programs that will provide the most benefits to District communities. I have a broad understanding of the practical challenges to effective conservation planning and a proven record of success in assessing what works and what doesn’t in regard to environmental conservation.

I have dedicated the past twenty years to work as an ecologist and environmental planner on a diverse range of important conservation issues including: coordinating a team of scientists on a status review for the marbled murrelet; conducting ecosystem studies on Klamath River damming – informing the recent decision to open the river for wild salmon runs; researching oil development impacts on endangered wildlife; and, studying how habitat changes affect sensitive bird populations. In the past decade, my work has focused on helping local jurisdictions to protect environmental critical areas consistent with the unique character of individual Western Washington communities. Over the last three years I served as the City of Issaquah’s wetland biologist and, in 2008, I received Trout Unlimited’s “Conservationist of the Year” award for facilitating the group’s effort to save wild Lake Sammamish Kokanee. I am very proud of and inspired by this honor, and hope to be able to use the experience that comes with my record of conservation achievement to the benefit of the King Conservation District.

I would also like to draw attention to a pervasive problem that I have encountered in my conservation work: the detrimental “over-engineering” of environmental restoration projects. In my capacity as a county and city biologist, I oversaw restoration projects for wetlands, streams, and important habitat. I also served on the KCD project review team providing technical recommendations on the viability of restoration projects requesting KCD funding. In this work, I would often see over-engineering – i.e., the unnecessary inclusion of engineered hard-scape elements such as check-dams, filter media, piping, rip-rap, catch basins, etc. – significantly increase costs while decreasing the effectiveness of environmental restoration. This problem is most evident on stream restorations where historic fish-passage barriers are proposed to be “fixed” by installing more new “engineered” structures that have the potential to be passage barriers in the future.

I hope all involved in environmental conservation in the District and the State become vigilant to the problems inherent to attempting restoration of natural processes from an “engineered perspective”, and I look forward to using my broad experience in conservation planning to help the Board effectively address this and other important issues at a time when the King Conservation District needs it most.