What State Wildlife Records Add

Jupiter Power’s ecological report for this site was produced by Dudek under contract to the applicant, who is not the property owner. Because the applicant is not the owner, Dudek could not access the full Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) Priority Habitats and Species (PHS) dataset for the parcels. The site-and-environment page covers what Dudek did find. This page covers what the state’s own public wildlife records add on top of that.

The data here come from WDFW’s publicly released Priority Habitats and Species geodatabase, downloaded April 20, 2026, clipped to a half-mile and one-mile radius around the centroid of the nine Cascadia Ridge project parcels (47.5263 N, -121.8613 W; NW quarter of Section 36, T24N, R7E, King County). Parcel footprints were taken from the King County Parcels service.

Three items in the state layer that are not in the applicant’s ecological report

All three appear within the half-mile radius except the spotted owl, which sits at 0.82 miles. None of them appear in Dudek’s CADS25-0076 ecological report for this site.

Gray wolf (Canis lupus). Federal Endangered, state Endangered, PHS-listed, Washington Species of Greatest Conservation Need. WDFW masks the actual location at township resolution because of poaching and harassment risk. The masked polygon in the public layer covers the project parcels. This is a material flag for EIS-level review of construction disturbance, clearing, and perimeter lighting.
Northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis). Federal Threatened, state Endangered, township-masked. The nearest edge of the owl’s masked polygon sits 0.82 miles from the project centroid. WDFW’s mask means the record exists somewhere in the covered township. Any EIS-level survey work would need to determine whether suitable habitat is present on the forested portions of the project parcels.
Fifteen freshwater wetland polygons within the half-mile radius, plus one PHS regional “Wetlands” polygon at the half-mile boundary. The fifteen are National Wetlands Inventory polygons (four Freshwater Emergent, nine Freshwater Pond, one Freshwater Forested/Shrub, and one general Wetlands polygon) carried into PHS as Priority Aquatic Habitat. The sixteenth is a PHSREGION “Wetlands” polygon attributed to Ted Muller covering the Coal Creek / Snoqualmie River wetlands complex, with its nearest edge 0.50 miles from the project centroid. The closest NWI wetland sits approximately 1,525 feet (0.29 miles) from the centroid. These are a separate basis, apart from the on-site wetlands in the critical-areas designation, for requesting EIS review of stormwater, hydrologic alteration, and indirect wetland impacts in the half-mile radius.

What the public layer does not show

WDFW masks sensitive species at Section, Quarter Township, or Township resolution to protect nests, dens, and high-value locations from targeted disturbance. Categories likely present in the area that would only appear in a qualified-requester release (not on a public page like this one):

Bald eagle and golden eagle nest records.
Great blue heron rookeries.
Elk calving areas and big game migration corridors.
Gray wolf den and rendezvous sites.
Northern spotted owl activity centers and suitable-habitat polygons.
Bat hibernacula and maternity roosts.

None of these appear in the non-sensitive layer for this site, which does not mean they are absent. It means the public data cannot tell you either way. Resolving that requires King County Department of Local Services, as SEPA lead agency, to file a qualified-requester sensitive-data request with WDFW and review the results through the EIS process.

What this adds to the SEPA record

Jurisdictionally, the WDFW PHS dataset is the state’s authoritative wildlife data source. County-level SEPA review commonly relies on it, and it is the layer the applicant’s consultant would have reviewed if the applicant owned the property. The presence of a gray wolf township mask overlapping the project parcels, a spotted owl township mask inside the one-mile radius, a documented cutthroat reach adjacent to the site, and sixteen wetland polygons within a half-mile radius, none of which appear in the applicant’s ecological report, is a concrete gap in the application’s baseline.

For the SEPA comment period on the forthcoming clearing and grading application, this is the factual basis for asking King County DPER to:

Obtain the full sensitive-species PHS dataset from WDFW under qualified-requester status before issuing any threshold determination.
Require seasonal species surveys for the gray wolf, spotted owl, Vaux’s swift, western toad, bald eagle, and great blue heron, scoped against the full sensitive layer.
Evaluate the cumulative impact of the project’s permanent fencing, clearing of 1,239 significant trees, perimeter lighting, and construction disturbance on the gray wolf township mask, the spotted owl township mask inside the one-mile radius, and the wetland complex inside the half-mile radius.

The full SEPA comment page explains the procedural path and the timing.

Source: WDFW Priority Habitats and Species non-sensitive statewide file geodatabase, refreshed monthly by WDFW, downloaded April 20, 2026. Clipping, reprojection, and distance calculations performed in GDAL and Python (shapely/pyproj) against the original source data. Project centroid computed from the King County Parcels service for the nine parcels in the Cascadia Ridge project footprint.