Heather Trim;

WDFW and EPA joined together to conduct a study collecting shoreline armouring data, parcel data, and owner surveys Sound wide.

The teams goal was to create social marketing behavior change strategy that will lead to residential landowners changing their shoreline armoring-related behaviors.

Social marketing is intended to increase motivators and decrease barriers. Some barriers with leaving shoreline unarmored include land owners property not protected from erosion or property not being protected after removal or existing armoring. Some motivators include providing healthy habitat for fish and wild life as well as getting a tax break and reducing fees to land owners.

Their findings include 57% of sound wide parcels are residential parcels, most residential parcels have shoreline armouring Thurston and Mason is the largest forage fish spawning areas that are armoured. 46% of these residential areas are unoccupied parcels. In other words the parcels that are effecting the forage fish spawning areas are mostly uninhabited by home owners.

They also looked at parcel size, land value,  and age or owners. Heather found that if the parcel size is larger it is also less likely to be armoured.