From: PHILIP BLOCH [philip.bloch@wadnr.gov]
Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2004 1:48 PM
To: franrecht@newportnet.com; allisonb@terralogicgis.com
Subject: MPAs in Washington

Allison - 

I spoke briefly with Fran Recht this morning and she relayed an interest in
receiving GIS layers of mpas in Washington, particularly those managed by DNR. I
believe I had distributed a GIS data set to you previously that included GIS
data for most protected areas in Washington. As you are likely aware Ginny
Broadhurst (formerly with PSAT) coordinated an effort to inventory existing MPAs
in conjuntion with the national MPA inventory. She has a tabular database
describing these sites.

As the metadata describes, this dataset is simple a combination of GIS datasets
from numerous other entities and furthermore it may have some quirks and
unintended features as a result of combining several, very different datasets
(e.g., I have yet to identify a dataset that properly identifies all of the San
Juan National Wildlife Refuge parcels). The tabular data is unique to this
dataset, but I believe its more informative than most of the input datasets and
provides much of the detail any user would want.

Anyhow, see the attached file for details, it was current as of early 2003, but
as I mentioned to Fran, the status of some of the DNR sites have changed in the
intervening period and my agency does not intend to distribute an update GIS
layer for the sites we manage (Aquatic Reserves, NAPs and NRCAs) until at least
next year (when we will finish reviewing four proposed Aquatic Reserve sites).
At that time I may be able to include the aquatic reserve that exists at
Protection Island (established in 1988) which is not reflected in any existing
datasets and is really a paper only protected area at this time.

I'd like to see us promulgate a single GIS dataset describing protected areas
in Washington rather than having multiple, competing versions out there
confusing users so perhaps we could chat about how to make that happen. As I
mentioned at this time this dataset is distributed upon request (to me), but is
not available on our website. I'd anticipate there are 20-30 copies of it out
there at this time.

Thanks!

- Phil

Philip Bloch
Aquatic Resources Division
Department of Natural Resources
360.902.1718
philip.bloch@wadnr.gov