One retired professor noticed something unusual about the marsh near his new home: it supported roughly 80 species of birds. That observation, made in 1974, eventually grew into a permanently protected wildlife preserve that still stands today.

  • 80 bird species documented in the marsh near Deer Harbor
  • 13 acres make up the combined Frank Richardson Wildfowl Preserve
  • 1972 the year Dr. Frank Richardson retired and turned to full-time conservation
  • 2 neighboring families whose land donations created the preserve
  • 1986 the year the preserve was formally established, one year after Richardson's death

A zoologist's second career

Dr. Frank Richardson spent his working life as a professor of zoology at the University of Washington, where he also headed the zoology division at the Burke Museum. Retirement in 1972 didn't slow him down — it redirected him. He spent several years studying bird life on Cypress Island before moving to Orcas Island with his wife, Dorothy, in 1974.

According to the San Juan Preservation Trust, Richardson quickly recognized that an unusually active marsh in his new Deer Harbor neighborhood supported some 80 different species of birds — an extraordinary concentration of avian diversity for a small wetland. He devoted the rest of his life to applying his academic training toward permanently protecting it.

What happened after he was gone

Richardson passed away in 1985, but his advocacy had already started something larger. The following year, neighbors Bob and Meg Connor donated a seven-acre conservation easement covering the eastern part of the marsh, specifically to launch a Preservation Trust effort honoring his life's work.

That gift triggered formal recognition of the site's ecological value: Washington State's Departments of Ecology and Natural Resources subsequently issued a report identifying the marsh as a top conservation priority in the region. In 1993, a second neighboring family, David and Shirley MacBryer, donated another six acres of wetland and adjacent uplands, completing the footprint of what is now a combined 13-acre preserve.

Frank recognized that the continued survival of certain animal and plant species depended on the permanent protection of habitat, so he devoted the rest of his life to applying his academic background to the pursuit of land conservation in the San Juan Islands.

A marsh worth protecting, decades later

The Frank Richardson Wildfowl Preserve remains open to the public today, with a small parking pullout along Channel Road and a memorial plaque marking the site. A short, steep trail across the road climbs to a clearing with screened views over the wetland — a vantage point still used by birders tracking the migratory wildfowl that stop there each year on their breeding and survival journeys.

The preserve is managed by the San Juan Preservation Trust, a nonprofit land trust that protects habitat across the San Juan Islands through both direct land ownership and conservation easements with private landowners. Richardson's marsh was one of the organization's earliest flagship projects, and it helped establish a template — land trust plus neighboring donors — that the Trust has since used to protect additional sites across the islands, including Turtleback Mountain and Vendovi Island.

Nearly fifty years after Richardson first noticed the marsh's unusual bird activity, the habitat he fought to protect is still doing exactly what he hoped: hosting dozens of species of ducks, herons, shorebirds, and other wildfowl in a small corner of Puget Sound that two generous neighboring families made sure would never be developed.