From wild birds to beet seeds, the Skagit Valley's riches are being kept safe

Competing interests collaborate to save what's best for all.

By Ron Judd, Pacific NW staff writerTHE WAYWARD elk could not have known. A solitary bull, he struck out from the upper Skagit Valley during last fall's rut, heading west, downstream, along the Skagit River — and just kept right on going.Marching across the Skagit Flats, the elk clearly did not intend to make a point about smart land use, creative coalitions between tractor drivers and policy wonks, or any other trappings of the fight to save the Puget Sound region's last, best fertile valley from death by pavement.But in the course of a trek that would take him, remarkably, all the way to Whidbey Island, the bull made the point anyway: The simple fact that this elk, by no means a stealthy ungulate, was able to march across the entire Skagit Flats without drawing notice, getting mowed down on a highway or tangling his antlers in a subdivision playground swing says something profound about the place he walked.Read the full article