COER Charitable - Citizens of Ebey's Reserve

As nearly 3 billion birds disappear across our nation --- military jets arrive in Puget Sound. Instead of the familiar songs and lyrical tweets of birds heralding the arrival of Spring, the roar of jet engines can be heard from Victoria, Canada, throughout the San Juans to Port Angeles, Port Townsend, the Olympic Peninsula, Whidbey Island and the OKanagan Valley. 

Noise pollution may not seem like a big deal but birds rely heavily on signing to communicate. Birdsong is used to attract mates, defend territory, and warn predators. This means that a bird’s ability to be heard plays a direct role in its reproductive interactions and survival. Bird song sound travels long distances when there is little wind and excess noise.

The most destructive noise in our Northwest Puget Sound airspace is the jet noise from the Navy’s 118 EA-18G Growlers. Their overflights occur over our fragile shorelines, active marshes, wetlands, flyways, wildlife refuges, National and State parks, Reserves, Monuments and Preserves. These critical habitats, developed over generations of time, offer little or no protection to birds or other species from jet noise overflights.

The sound of military aviation is unike any other source of noise. Growlers emit noise that is intense, with rumbling low-frequency energy that penetrates windows, shakes walls and can elicit more severe responses than civil aviation. 

COER’s mission is to defend the health, welfare, and history of human and animal communities in the Pacific Northwest threatened by naval jet warfare training.  Each of COER’s projects and priorities revolve around this increasing military jet noise, while make connections with other issues like climate change, social justice, human health impacts, harm to children’s learning, over-all degradation of our environment, and extinction of species.  

COER has sought justice and collaborated with other organizations in research and in legal challenges in Washington courts and in federal court. In 2024 Federal Judge Jones entered an order on a motion by Citizens of Ebey’s Reserve (COER) and Washington’s Attorney General to include specific requirements be added to his September 1, 2023, decision that the Navy must prepare a new Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for its expanded EA-18G Growler operations at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. That same year, COER notified the Navy and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of its intent to sue over failures of te Biological Opinions for the expanded Growler Environmental Impact Statement to fully account for the impacts of Growler jet noise on marbled murrelets. 
Marbled Murrelet nesting Our work is urgent. This is a critical time for our planet, and for the world we will leave our children. Saving endangered species and habitats requires our action and change. COER believes that we can limit military jet noise and save a critically endangered coastal sea bird, like the Marbled Murrelet. In the mossy platforms of the tallest old growth trees, Marbled Murrelets nest. These small seabirds – auks, in the same family as puffins and murres – have seen serious population declines in recent years. It is our current focus to save this small coastal seabird from extinction. By reducing jet noise, we can preserve habitat and individual birds so they can thrive into the future. If we don’t act now – the Marbled Murrelet will be gone forever.

For decades, Northwest Washington communities partnered with the military to do their part for national security while respectfully sharing the same countryside, airspace, and waters. Today, however, the United States Navy is needlessly assaulting Puget Sound’s ecosystems and degrading critical habitats, impacting over 74,000 people in Northwest Washington and disappearing our birds with their jet noise. Moving jet training to West Coast military locations was supported by a recent public survey and by a Department of Defense Siting Study.

In Northwest Washington’s Puget Sound and the waters -- known as the Salish Sea -- living communities are being battered daily by ear-shattering jet noise. Countrysides and airspace are no longer shared.

The impacts of 118 jets training over 150 days per year for consecutive hours include deafening noise that is harming these vast networks of inter-connected biological communities. If we do nothing, we will see more empty nests. It’s sad and heartbreaking to consider! The Navy has many options for jet training locations. The Marbled Murrelet has few options. At the top of our list --- is to stop the harmful military jet noise as quickly as possible.  With help, we can turn heartbreak into action ... and a future that will include the songs of this Washington seabird, the Marbled Murrelet while we preserve livable habitats for future generations of Washingtonians.

Help us achieve our vision ... to return to a quiet, serene, peaceful soundscape where diversity of life, communities, and habitats can thrive without harmful noise from military jets.