Thanksgiving Musings

ITN has much to be thankful for, and as another successful season winds down, we feel the love coming in from the community as well.  Thanks in large part to the support of our membership, we have measurably improved the health and well-being of the people of Kodiak by providing them with a low-impact way to experience the outdoors.  We have also improved the environmental health of the island by providing bridges at important salmon stream crossings, reduced the erosive impact of a 350-mile trail system on Kodiak's fragile soils, and removed over 40 tons of marine debris from our otherwise pristine shores.

We continue to mature as an organization by developing technical expertise among our staff and volunteers and by building capacity for trail construction and coastal stewardship. Our full-time staff has grown to three and as we enter our seventh year, I feel we are no longer a young organization, but rather are just beginning to hit our stride. As it happens, the rapid growth we have experienced since our inception has, for the first time, leveled off. As I draft the the 2013 operations plan, I am forecasting a slight to moderate decrease in our project budget.  We may not always be able to do more, but we will strive to always do better.

The work we are doing is perhaps more important than ever.  The impacts of the 2011 Tohoku tsunami are just starting to be felt here.  In sharp contrast to the terrible devastation that hit the east coast during Hurricane Sandy, the total impact of this event may take decades to fully comprehend.  The tsunami wreckage is spread across tens of thousands of miles of uninhabited shores, and even the most conservative estimates of the debris expected to make landfall in Alaska are in the tens of thousands of tons.  The impact of all these synthetic materials  into the food web is still unknown, but the body of science is growing.  We do know that we need to respond to this environmental crisis, and hope to boost our efforts in marine debris removal while maintaining the other services we provide to this community.