³ÉÈËXÕ¾

If you’re headed to a state park this weekend to enjoy the early spring weather, you may see some protesters. The group suing the Washington State Parks Commission over Naval SEAL training is organizing demonstrations in parks across the state.

The Whidbey Environmental Action Network’s coalition is encouraging park-users to go out to their local state park on Saturday to picket, gather signatures, and speak to the public about why they oppose the Parks Commission’s January decision to allow Navy SEALs to train in more than a dozen coastal state parks.

If some Washingtonians are not comfortable going out in public during the pandemic, they are encouraged to use Saturday to contact their legislators and government representatives from home.

The covert special operations training, which had been conducted in smaller numbers of state parks until now, involves SEALs coming ashore and holding staged stealth activities for up to three days at a time.

New orca baby sparks questions over Naval SEAL training

For the first nine months, the SEAL training will have to take place at night to minimize the impact on park users. After that point, it could be expanded to daytime hours by the commission’s director if the Navy follows all rules.

According to the , training needs to take place at a distance from camping areas. Steps to reduce the likelihood of park-goers coming into contact with SEALs — including stopping or banning training “if there is an existing public presence in or approaching the training area,” or having a safety staff member intervene to stop a park user from walking into a training area — should also be taken.

However, the Whidbey Environmental Action Network’s (WEAN) lawsuit seeks to put a stop to this training on the grounds that it poses a threat to the well-being of park users, plants, and animals.

WEAN founders Steve Erickson and Marianne Edain fear the knowledge of this training will deter Washingtonians from renewing their Discover Passes, thereby taking much-needed funds from Washington State Parks, and stopping residents from enjoying socially distanced activities in the state’s natural areas.

Erickson and Edain are especially concerned about the exercises’ effects on endangered plants and animals.

“You couldn’t find a much worse proposal — there are going to be negative impacts in the nearshore from noise and from using submersibles, potentially through eelgrass beds,” said Erickson, who also serves as the group’s litigation coordinator. “There are going to be negative environmental impacts, … almost every possible bad thing in terms of effects on the environment, effects on people’s direct recreational experiences, are going to be triggered by this.”

The regulations require trainees to stay on designated trails and away from grass, bushes, and other growth in areas where there are endangered or threatened animals or plants. SEALs must specifically avoid eelgrass and cannot train during nesting time for sensitive species. Any whale sightings must also be reported, and the activities would be stopped and moved elsewhere in this case.

However, WEAN believes that the rules do not have enough teeth to actually enforce environmental protections.

“There is no provision for monitoring” SEALs on the day of training, Edain said.

While SEALs are prohibited from carrying actual weapons during the training activities, Erickson and Edain worry that fake weapons could look real enough to cause panic if a hiker accidentally spots them.

“It does raise the potential problem of a very unfortunate accident, because you can be pretty sure at any given time in a busy state park, there are going to be people who are going to have guns on them,” Erickson said.

They feel that the military owns enough similar land that could be used as an alternative to parks.

“Joseph Whidbey State Park is right next to the Navy base, there’s really no difference there,” Erickson said. “The only difference there is that Joseph Whidbey has civilians.”

J. Overton, deputy public affairs officer for the Navy’s Northwest Region, told ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Radio last month that bases, for the most part, are too built-up for the kind of SEAL training activities being done.

“The point of the training is, you want these folks to be able to operate pretty much anywhere in the world they would need to. There’s just really nowhere else really in the U.S. that has the same topographic features, cold water, where you have a state of nature, but … also some human development,” Overton said. “Our Navy bases here are quite developed, …  whereas the State Parks have a more rugged shoreline.”

While the permit expressly forbids SEALs from conducting surveillance and reconnaissance training on park users, WEAN members worry that park-goers may still be inadvertently watched during the exercises if military staff members being observed have to tell park users to avoid the area.

“The public will in no way be surveilled during these exercises. That is not now and has not been the intent of the training,” Overton stated in an email. “The surveillance practices will be on other personnel associated with the training, not park visitors or other members of the public.”

Overton said people are picturing some sort of storming of park beaches out of World War II. In reality, he said, it’s much quieter; being around the public or leaving a trace with nature would “fail the training.”

“There is a very inaccurate narrative that some folks have got a hold of, of what they see this training going to be,” he said. “The point of the training is to leave no trace, be as stealthy as possible, be far away from the public. The things that many public park users are concerned about are exactly what the Navy forces there are not doing.”

The Parks Commission said it will not comment on pending litigation.