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Eleanor Stopps was an environmental activist and leader known for helping to get Protection Island, located in the strait of Juan de Fuca north of Discovery Bay, established as a wildlife habitat. Starting in the 1960s, she worked with fellow Seattle Audubon Society member Zella Schultz, an artist and ornithologist, to study and band glaucous-winged gulls on Protection Island. The island had been recognized since the 1930s as an important habitat for sea birds and wildlife, but it later became privately owned and was destined for development. Schultz had begun an effort to convince the state or federal government to purchase and protect the island and its species. When Schultz died in 1974, Stopps vowed to continue her friend's work to protect Protection Island. She testified before the Washington State Legislature and the U.S. Congress. She led a nine-year grassroots effort that finally proved successful in 1982 when Congress allocated $4 million for the purchase of Protection Island as a national wildlife refuge.

Stopps was a resident of Jefferson County, Washington, from 1974 to 2012, when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer and moved to Gig Harbor to be closer to her family. In her long career as an environmentalist, she received a Citizen Appreciation Award in 1988 from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and was acknowledged as Jefferson County Citizen of the Century for 1889-1989. In 1992 she received the Nature Conservancy's Oak Life, its highest award. Since 2005, her legacy has been honored through the Eleanor Stopps Environmental Leadership Award, now administered through the Port Townsend Marine Science Center. The award recognizes citizens on the North Olympic Peninsula who have provided leadership in protection and stewardship for the environment. Eleanor died on April 25, 2012 in Tacoma at the age of 92.