It’s a bit ironic and terribly sad if you love wildlife. All the neighbors tried to explain to the Hearings Examiner what the Tacoma Rescue Mission and the former County Executive just refused to get through their heads. The Spanaway Marsh property already had numerous residents. Residents that could not attend the hearings or testify on their own behalf. They have now become homeless.

First, it was black bears running through Spanaway neighborhoods when the first trees started to drop. Neighbor after neighbor along the Spanaway Loop Road corridor on the southwest end of the lake reported bear sightings. Bears in their back yard. Bears running down the road. Bears in their kiddy pool.

Last night, as I was attending a meeting, planning projects to raise money for the Parkland School mortgage, my Facebook Messenger alert went off. A friend from my school days and lifelong Spanaway resident on the wetlands reached out. There was a porcupine, cute as the dickens, running around her parents back yard for days. Her home is two doors away; her parents are in their 90’s. Prickly Pete didn’t know what to do or where to go. Connie Roose Gerritsen wanted to know what she could do. She sent photos and video of Pete wandering the backyard in distress. In the video of Pete, her brother walks 50 feet up the fence line to where the silt barriers of the future “Good Neighbor Village” for the homeless will sit.

Perhaps instead of a garden, they should have planned for a zoo. Wild creatures are very literally coming out of the woods, the woods that are no longer there. <insert crying emoji here>

“Hi Marianne, This little guy has no home now, because his home was cut down and bulldozed for The Village!! He has been wondering around my parent’s field looking for food. My brother David took these photos and video today. We even had two bears not long ago. Do you know of any wildlife people that can help this little guy? I am so upset over this! What have they done?!!!”

I responded, “Awww… he is cute… but do not cuddle!”

I am not clueless on who jurisdiction this is. I did a quick Internet lookup and a screen shot for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. I pasted it back to her in Messenger and I will share it here in case anyone else needs it.

If I was cynical, I would say this would have been a great Christmas present for under the Hearings Examiner’s Christmas tree. If there are a couple more, Bruce and Steve should have gotten one too.

This is where the Roose property sits, right adjacent to where the new road is going into the GNV site.

Here is a link to the video of Prickly Pete scrambling around in distress. It is possible the rest of his family was lost as the trees were dropped.

Connie is a very tenderhearted doggy mom. She is the one who would adopt the homeless one eyed chihuahua. “I’m just heartbroken for all of these animals. And all for what… greed!!”

There is also a black bear, in Winter frequenting the property. Here is the bear video. His backside looks a bit mangy.

The Federal Government dangled all those millions for the County to snap up to’ house the homeless.’ Our County Executive chose to use it to break open a watershed woodland area for development, a property that would never have otherwise been suitable for housing. Using the teary eyed ‘helping the homeless’ gig, he got an otherwise undevelopable property ripped wide open for development, because our Pierce County Hearings Examiners don’t know how to say, “No.” The Planners, under pressure to keep their jobs and the pensions they have worked years for, labeled it with a Determination of Non-Significance instead of a very obvious place that an environmental impact statement should have been required. Pete is a tiny, prickly example of the impact.

This was a grave disservice to nature and a crying shame to see the ones it really hurt.