By Anne Kilgannon
Members of Black Hills Audubon are watchful and dedicated conservationists of our local places that support bird life—really, all natural life. In our fifty-some years of work we’ve been involved in numerous struggles to save from destruction woods, prairies, and shorelines threatened by development or loss to contamination by pollution. Lately, members have mobilized to protect land in Thurston County from massive warehouse construction; that fight continues, as well as the monitoring of mining developments, the blight of urban sprawl, and other dangers to our local habitats.
Recently I had the great fortune to read an excellent history of one of the success stories of just this kind of local struggle: For the Good of the Order: The Braget Farm and Land Use in the Nisqually Valley, by Timothy W. Ransom. As birders, we are familiar with the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, the estuary of its eponymous river that carves a path from a Mount Rainier glacier down to Puget Sound and the continuing effort by the Nisqually Land Trust to preserve these lands flanking its course, but the story about the area bordering the refuge on the Pierce County side is less well known. Just as watershed environments transcend property lines in life, so should the stories we tell include both sides of the river. Here is our chance to learn about the banks and marshes and upland reaches that, while not officially part of the refuge, are vital to its health and history. How this area was protected and eventually saved is an unusual conservation history captured in detail through the lens of one family’s stubborn vision of what they viewed as the best use of this land.
Ransom immediately pulls the reader into the scene with this compelling image: “He was always dressed as if he had just stepped off a tractor—flannels, suspenders, and boots—and his hat invariably sported the logo of some farm implement company or the National Rifle Association.” He couldn’t help but notice “the loudest guy in the room” at every meeting of the Nisqually River Council, and while others frowned or ground their teeth in exasperation as Ken Braget grabbed the microphone for yet another long harangue, Ransom found himself curious about this singular character and the source of his passion and perseverance. Beneath the billed cap and flannels was a man who cared passionately about his little corner of the globe—a dairy farm on the banks of the Nisqually delta—who would show up everywhere possible to defend his sense of what was right for the land where he and generations of his family had lived and worked. A noisy nuisance to some was gold to Ransom, a way to understand the beating heart of the place, where the Nisqually River formed a lush estuary and delta, the place those in the room had all gathered to protect.
Nisqually was the last undeveloped estuary on Puget Sound, a rare gem, but increasingly eyed by those interested in its potential to be something other than what it was. Where some saw a teeming salmon nursery and home for flocks of resident and migrating birds, or a place of immemorial survival and deep cultural significance for Native lives, or as land worked for generations to create a home and farm, others saw opportunities. That is, opportunities to transform a vibrant living world into a repository for a city’s trash, or a place to store logs before shipping them abroad, or most exciting of all, a super-port where large ships could disgorge their cargos and pick up new loads for global trade. Or even another city, at least a bedroom community handy to major transportation routes. The delta was a tantalizing blank spot on a map to be filled as commerce and other forces dictated. Already the US Army, railroad builders and State highway engineers had nibbled at its edges. It was ripe for the picking.
Ken Braget and his family, among others, stood in the way, stubborn and vociferous and seemingly tireless. Ransom has dedicated untold hours and years learning what made the Bragets so unflinchingly stalwart—and ultimately successful in saving their home and their own vision of “the best and highest use” of the Nisqually delta and valley. Tireless himself in active listening and probing for understanding, Ransom’s history is a masterpiece in uncovering the meaning of the Bragets’ life and mission. The last of the clan, Kenny Braget, held firm, Ransom discovers, because of a deep-seated passion for the place; compelled to save it, he was an unstoppable force. His love of the land and the life it supported was a fierce and constant rebuke to those whose notions of land use were merely utilitarian and mercenary.
Conservationists should take note. Braget was not a biologist or even a bird watcher—except for the migrating ducks that he loved to hunt. But he knew every inch of his land through all the seasons. He wasn’t a lawyer or a person deft with the ways of navigating legislative processes, or a student of the bureaucracies that needed to be traversed—and all those skills and experience are crucial in contests of this sort. Patience, persistence, organizing and the stamina for endless meeting attendance: all are necessary. Nisqually Delta was lucky to have dedicated teams of people with these qualities. But as Ransom so clearly shows, Braget brought his unfailing love of the place to this fight and in doing so elevated the whole struggle to save the Nisqually to an epic level. His love was contagious and, in the end, a vital part of a winning strategy. We are all in his debt when we walk the trails of the Nisqually refuge, and look out across the glimmering sheet of water as the tide comes in and the birds fan out over the flats.
For the Good of the Order: The Braget Farm and Land Use in the Nisqually Valley can be ordered from Ransom’s webpage at https://gorhamprinting.com/book/nisqually. He is working on getting it into local bookstores and the library system, and plans to put an e-version up on Amazon soon.
