“I think almost everybody that I know, in one way or another, is scrambling to reorganize their fieldwork,” says Department of Natural Resource’s Dr. Teodora Minkova, research and monitoring manager of the Olympic Experimental State Forest. “Inevitably, these projects have been affected.”

There’s concern from within agencies and universities that their ability to monitor the environment is limited, and they aren’t able to perform some important fieldwork.

“The biggest question eventually is when we get back to work, what did we miss or what things have changed? [But right now], it's really hard to tell,” says Todd Mitchell, environmental director of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community’s Department of Environmental Protection. “We don't know at this point. And we’re just hoping for the best.”

The long-term repercussions of both may leave profound impacts on our understanding and conservation of Washington’s natural systems.

Resilience in the field

Multiple sources at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Washington departments of Natural Resources and Fish and Wildlife, the University of Washington and other agencies say research and projects deemed essential to human health and food access can often continue while socially distanced.

But the projects that can’t move forward will lose critical data and monitoring opportunities, putting vulnerable animal populations at risk.

“It might allow a lot of illicit activity to flourish and just hamper our ability to keep tabs on species that we're really concerned about, or put in place important conservation actions to stop species declines,” says UW wildlife ecologist Dr. Laura Prugh.

Michael Schmidt, deputy director of salmon advocacy and research organization Long Live the Kings, helps coordinate field programs (like the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project) across a number of partner agencies. He says it took a week for many science groups to realize what they could justify as essential work.

Some projects can be rescheduled. Long Live the Kings was planning a study of the Ballard Locks to test technologies that deter seals from preying on adult and juvenile salmon, but it can’t happen until researchers can access the property.

At Fish and Wildlife, the pandemic means triaging plans for some survey work and research. “Many things we're just not going to do,” says Hannah Anderson, listing and recovery section manager at Fish and Wildlife’s Wildlife Diversity Division. “We really could miss whole years of data collection, and we're just going to have to deal with that. We're sort of just all in that boat, right? Of course our first priority is the safety of our people. And so that's just how it's got to be.”

In a normal year, Department of Fish and Wildlife employees use radio telemetry to track endangered western pond turtles to their nests as part of the recovery program. "We're sort of in a 'wait and see' place," says the department's Hannah Anderson. "It would be a little late to start on May 5. And we may not be able to have the staff capacity to start at that time." (Stefanie Bergh, WDFW)

Researchers say it often takes a while for environmental impacts to register, so the severity of lost data or impacts to unmonitored land won’t be clear until the shutdown ends.

“We're not hyperanxious about conditions being impacted over a couple of weeks,” says Cynthia Wilkerson, Fish and Wildlife’s Lands Division manager. “If it gets to be longer, then we're going to be thinking really hard about things like, you know, what is the lost opportunity on invasive and noxious weed management, what is the lost opportunity for restoration projects that are in progress, is there habitat spoilage associated with that. But at this point we don't have those anxieties.”