Washington tribe seeks control of Dungeness Spit refuge 63%
By John Ryan0%
5/7/2026, 11:45:03 PM
Topics: Environment
BS Summary: This article contains 28 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Appeal to Emotion, and Confirmation Bias, with Appeal to Authority as the most egregious example at 20.2% saturation with 158 hits. Analysis detected 1,178 faulty-reasoning hits from 784 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 58.1% and a BS Rank of 63% (7,649 of 20,269 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 62.30% of the article peer group.
The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe wants to take control of two wildlife refuges on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula back from the federal government.
The tribe is pushing for federal legislation to take over the Dungeness and Protection Island national wildlife refuges.
The Dungeness refuge encompasses the five-mile-long Dungeness Spit, popular with hikers, waterfowl, and shorebirds.
Protection Island is a bird sanctuary, off-limits to the public, about 10 miles east of Dungeness Spit.
The tribe has been co-managing the two refuges near Sequim, Washington, with the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service since 2024.
Now the tribe is pushing for full control.
Under the tribe’s proposal, the land would be transferred to the U.S.
Bureau of Indian Affairs for the tribe to manage, similar to other lands held “in trust” for tribes or tribal members by the federal government.
“If we're able to remove some of that less-local control from us, we are able to care for the land more deeply and, I would say, more correctly because we are here and we know the land.
We're intimate with it,” said Jamestown S’Klallam Tribal Vice Chair Loni Greninger.
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She said the S’Klallam have an ancient belief that everything in creation is family.
“When these ancestral territories were taken from us in the old days, this is a chance for us to come back to our family,” Greninger said.
“It's like a family reunion, and we get to bring our family back into our arms.”
An online petition opposing the proposed transfer of refuge land to tribal control had 1,600 signatures on Thursday.
“Americans have treasured these landscapes for generations, and any drastic changes in their ownership should be carefully considered and involve public consultation,” the petition states.
“They're already co-managing the spit,” said Port Angeles retiree Rose Marschall, who started the petition on behalf of an all-volunteer group called Clallam Freedom Alliance.
“Everything's fine, and so I don't think it needs to change, and people around here are seeing them buying up a lot of property all the time, anytime they can.”
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The alliance launched in 2020 to oppose public health mandates during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Marschall said more than half the petition’s signatures were from Sequim residents.
On May 3, the Sequim City Council voted unanimously to send a letter to lawmakers in support of the tribe’s proposed takeover of 900 acres of refuge lands near the city.
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The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, with nearly 500 enrolled members, owns or controls about 2,000 acres of land, according to Loni Greninger, though its lands are scattered throughout Clallam County.
“We are checkerboarded,” she said.
The S’Klallam and other eastern Olympic Peninsula tribes signed the Treaty of Point No Point with the U.S. government in 1855, giving up almost all of their lands in exchange for $60,000 and promises of education, health care, and continued rights of fishing, hunting, and gathering.
Greninger said the refuges’ conservation-focused mission and public access would not change under tribal control.
“We believe in people being able to access the land that they're a part of, both native and non-native,” she said.
“We're very careful to keep our positive relationships with our local communities.”
“Once they own it, they can do whatever they want,” Marschall said.
The legislation, which has not been introduced in Congress, would prohibit any gaming or commercial development on the transferred lands, according to Greninger.
Since 2023, three environmental groups have been fighting to block the tribe from farming oysters on state-owned tidelands near the Dungeness refuge, with the case currently before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
In 2025, Rep.
Emily Randall (D-Bremerton) proposed legislation to transfer some federal lands on the Olympic Peninsula to the control of the Elwha and Quinault tribes.
Through a spokesperson, Randall declined an interview request but sent an emailed statement.
"I plan to work closely with the [Jamestown S’Klallam] Tribe, the county, local community members, the relevant state and federal agencies, and other members of our congressional delegation to ensure that any land transfer continues to safeguard public access and protects these areas for generations to come," Randall said by email.
In a similar move in 2021, the Department of the Interior transferred the 19,000-acre National Bison Range to the Bureau of Indian Affairs to be held in trust for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation in Montana.
The U.S. government had carved the bison range out of the tribal reservation in 1908.
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