HyleBlog - Friends of the Hylebos

Bring on the Spring!

I'm finally back in the office after a morning spent mostly out in the sunshine and the tranquil beauty of  the Hylebos. Hillary and I began the day early, with Megan Erkinnen of the Milton-Edgewood Signal.

We put on hip boots and hiked through the West Milton Nature Preserve. 

The dogwoods and willows are just beginning to bud out and the site has the sparse look of winter about to leave.

The wetlands are still charged up, full of water from the recent rains.

Our crews have completed a significant amount of thinning of the dogwoods and willows and the site looks vastly different than the last time I visited. The thinning will allow the trees to spread out their branches more and also will allow more light into the site to promote growth of the underplanted species. 

In the stream itself, the large wood debris is doing its job, creating habitat, making the stream change course, add a little pool hab here, a little gravel spill there. It's magic stuff!

The site just looks incredible. I don't have anything articulate to write, but...Go, Team Hylebos!!!

More wood crammed in at every angle. Note how several pieces are hanging above the water. This is future in-stream wood.

I did take some pics..and also uploaded some video to our YouTube Channel.

After West Milton, Hillary and I went over to the West Hyleboss Wetlands to meet with the 2009 Advancing Leadership class. This was our 8th (I think) annual tour with the group for their annual quality of life day.

We had a great hike through the park and overall much better than a morning spent stuck to my computer!

Oh, man, warm weather is coming. I love it. Bring on the Spring!

Nice Day For a Hylebos Visit

Beautiful. Astounding. Natural. Sunny. Those are just some of the words to describe the Hylebos on today's visit to Lower Hylebos Marsh and the West Milton Nature Preserve. I took Laurie to see some of the prime examples of our work. Both sites were beautiful, yet starkly so, with winter's influence still dominant.

At the Lower Hylebos we saw this tree, recently fallen across the stream. This is the way nature redesign's her stream work.

We also saw two suspicious looking fellows pop out of the vegetation and walk briskly out of the site. I wonder what they were doing in there?

West Milton was partially frozen. Stomping through the muck was not nearly as muddy as usual, though boggy spots were still evident. (I think Laurie found one!) Everywhere, ice covered standing water, giving the site a stillness interrupted only by a retreating housecat, probably out birding. Don't get me started on the danger of housecats!

Here is a picture of me playing with the picket fence structure. (note my Arsenal scarf. Go Gunners!)

We rounded up our trip at the West Hylebos Wetlands, where we met with Diana Noble-Gulliford, Marie Sciaqua and Paul Gulliford from the Historical Society. They had been entertaining a group of kids from Silver Lake Elementary. Diana and Marie showed the students Barker Cabin and then the kids took a tour of the wetlands.

I mentioned the long partnership and natural affinity between the Friends of the Hylebos and the Federal Way Historical Society and Diana joked that "we shared the same mother." So true. Ilene Marckx was a big part of both organizations. I'm glad we'll be sharing space with the Historical Society at the park for Hylebos Days.

East Hylebos Tree Planting Underway

Geez, it's Thursday already and I haven't blogged since Monday. I'm ashamed. That's just not good blogging.

What can I say, though? It's been a busy week with lots of meetings. There will be some announcements coming up. We also have a new opportunity for a significant restoration project that just came up. So, we're working to see if we can make the pieces fit.

Let's see, here's something on my mind. Living in a house of all females you have to make compromises in your lifestyle. Like, for instance, soap. There is never a manly soap in the shower. I typically face alternatives like "Lavender Lily" and "Grapefruit Pomegranate" body washes. I'm just saying, if you see me today and you think I smell like a fruity strawberry essence, that would be why...

OK. Enough about me. Hillary has crews out at the East Hylebos, planting native trees. We're underplanting conifers in the 2nd growth forest in an effort to support overall forest health. Although this area is protected and has a nice canopy of trees, there are not enough conifers and particularly, not enough young conifers, which are so important to forest succession. Funding for this effort has been provided in part by the William and Elizabeth Hyde Fund through the Tacoma Community Foundation, and through other donors who supported the 2007 HomeStreet Bank Tree Challenge.

We're hoping to be able to do another forest health assessment and plan for this area. It is such a nice, beautiful forest and so important to the East Hylebos Creek.

This is the official kick-off to the 2008 restoration schedule. Much, much more to come!

Lawsuits, orcas and Stephen Baldwin (?!)

Good news is coming in to Hylebos HQ this week. We received word that our West Milton project will receive a sizable grant from a settlement of a Clean Water Act third party lawsuit. I can't talk about the details until all the i's have been dotted and such, but the money will provide critical stewardship of the site.

In the past year, the Friends has received several of thes settlements for our projects. We are not involved in the legal side of the suits. The Friends doesn't sue and in general, doesn't approach conservation in an adversial. (Though I certainly recognize the value of groups that do this work). To do watershed conservation right, though, you have to be able to work with all stakeholders and so we do not get into enforcement issues or lawsuits.

However, some of the groups (plaintiffs and defendands) that do, have been generous enough to send settlement money to the Hylebos for Hylebos conservation projects. This has become an important source of income for restoration projects, particularly the maintenance phase, which is usually hard to fund.

I'll have more news about this in coming weeks, but suffice it to say, the West Milton project is getting a shot in the arm!

Recent news form the Puget Sound regarding Orcas has been dire. Reacting to the news of 7 missing, and thought to be dead Orcas from the Southern Puget Sound population, the Puget Sound Partnership decided to add Orcas to their newly released (still draft form) Action Plan.

And finally, thank God, but Stephen Baldwin will stay in America. I can't imagine an America without the talented thespianism of Stephen. In fact, when I'm feeling low I pop a DVD of The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas into the player and suddenly, everything seems right again. Thank you, Stephen Baldwin. Thank you for keeping America's rank of third rate hack actors full.

Soaked in the Jungle at West Milton

I started the morning off at the West Milton Nature Preserve. Hillary and I had to take a look at a  stormwater drainage system that had mysteriously appeared. While there, I got a good look at the great progress our crews from Restoration Logistic were making, cutting Himalayan blackberry. Exposed canes will be dabbed with an aquatic-safe herbicide (as soon as it stops raining, thank you).

You can see here some of the cleared areas. What a difference it makes to get rid of the bberry. Give those salmonberry and willows and others some room and they will take off!

On the way out, I decided to walk the site since I haven't seen this site for quite awhile. Boy, did I get more than I bargained for. The nature preserve is a jungle! Remember, two and a half years ago, the site was mostly cleared during project construction, aside from some earlier plantings and scattered natives.

This is what it looks like now! Talk about your green revolution! While I was dressed for the weather, I hadn't bargained on the amount of water held in the canopy. Every move shook a bucket or two of water out of the trees and onto my head and down my back. By the time I made it to the car, I was soaked from the neck up.

The jungle was so thick, that it was fairly difficult to make my way through the site. Several times, I had to stop and try to figure out where I was, or backtrack and take a new path because of the thickness of the vegetation. Pretty cool! We planted this jungle, the Friends and you. This is the work you make possible. When you support the Friends, you're making the world greener. If you need proof, just drive down to the West Milton Nature Preserve.

A couple other cool things. Check out the tree cover over the stream channel. Before this project, fish and other stream-dwellers were out in the open, exposed to predators and heat from the sun. Now, it's a great place to hang out, if you're a fish.

Another cool thing is this little log spanning the stream, near the upstream end of the project. Hillary pointed out to me how the log is catching sediment behind it (more clearly seen when it isn't raining and the stream levels are lower) and creating a plunge pool on the log's downstream side.

I love this project!

Food Composting
Here's an article about a food composting pilot project in Seattle. What a great idea! With F-Dub's new food composting, we've been doing this at home for the last year and its amazing how much it reduces our volume of garbage. I'd like to see something like this started on a larger scale in the Hylebos Watershed.

Once In A Week Posting

Wow. I can't believe I've gone the entire week without a blog posting! That's a first. This was one of those weeks where there were a host of meetings, a deadline or two and various surprises thrown in the mix. So here's a hasty, while-I'm-Drinking-the-Morning-Coffee-Scanning-the-News blog posting.

First off, salmon at West Milton! Wednesday I met Josh Baldi, special assistant to Dept. of Ecology Director Jay Manning, and Friends' board member Judy Turpin, at West Milton for a tour. The DOE directed about $140,000 in oil spill mitigation fines to the Friends for this project. During the tour we saw two pink salmon at various points in the stream. We may be getting a lot more pinks in the future, as these salmon are beginning to show up and spawn in more numbers each year.

It's gratifying to see that the salmon are continuing to view our work at West Milton positively!

We also received a very nice surprise in the mail this week. You all know about our HomeStreet Bank Tree Challenge participation. The donations had been coming in at a really nice clip. Then, I opened an envelope Wednesday to find a $10,000 check from the William and Elizabeth Hyde Fund at the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation! The donors designated the Tree Challenge program and directed the funds to tree planting in Pierce County. We'll have more on this next week, but for now, let me just say that is so cool! This is a huge boost to our reforestation efforts on the Pierce County side of Hylebos.

I have a big thanks for the William and Elizabeth Hyde Fund! What a huge impact their donation makes to our conservation efforts!

I also had a chance to meet with former Stream Team Coordinator Katie Moller, now the Urban Forester at the city of Seattle. It's always great to see Katie again. I learned a lot in our meeting about the Green Seattle Partnership that we may be able to apply to our reforestation efforts in the Hylebos.

Now, Some News Sifting
Global Warming Report Out: Uh Oh.
All you HyleBloggers out there know already how I feel about global warming. I hate to be so right on this issue. But the science just keeps moving in my direction. Yesterday, the fourth and final report of this round of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was released. Bottom line: We've locked in serious global warming, we're beginning to feel the impacts and they're gonna get worse, and we'd better act soon because our GHG emissions are going through the roof. Read about it here, here and here.

As early as 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will suffer water shortages, residents of Asia's megacities will be at great risk of river and coastal flooding, Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says.

2020? Go down to the Southeast and Southwest of our great country and you'll find the heat waves are already there and the droughts are seriously affecting cities.

We're all familiar with the images of damage to the human environment after hurricanes Katrina and Rita battered the southeast and Gulf Coast. A new report to be published in Science contends that the damage to native forests of the area was also unprecedented. Unfortunately, like the initial and follow-up federal response to Katrina, government programs to help the trees recover aren't faring well.

"This is the worst environmental disaster in the United States since the Exxon Valdez accident ... and the greatest forest destruction in modern times," said James Cummins, executive director of the conservation group Wildlife Mississippi and a board member of the Mississippi Forestry Commission. "It needs a really broad and aggressive response, and so far that just hasn't happened."

And finally, I see that the Todd Beamer High girls soccer team has earned a spot in the state championship game tonight. A round of Hyle-Applause and best wishes for these girls bringing the state trophy back to Federal Way.

Alright, that's it. I'm done. I'm taking the rest of the weekend off dry. Stay dry and warm (unless that's not the way you roll) and we'll see you back here on Monday.

Salmon Photos

As promised (tho, a little late), the Chinook photos from West Milton Friday.

The fish clearly had dark spots on both lobes of the tail, the large oblong spots on the back and dark mouths and gumlines. The female was still digging when we observed them. And there were two jack males loitering about 40 feet downstream.

This observation is particularly exciting because I and others have not expected Chinook to spawn in the east branch. We certainly conceived of the West Milton project as benefiting coho salmon primarily. We'll have to see what future use occurs in this stream, but for now, it appears that the Chinook consider it useful habitat.

 

 

 

 

 

As mentioned in Friday's post, I had visitors from the GSP, or Green Seattle Partnership, including our former Stream Team Coordinator and now Seattle Urban Forester Katie Moller. This is Brad from Washington Conservation Corps, Joanna Nelson from Cascade Land Conservancy, Katie, and Seattle Public Utilities' Chris Woelfel. This was our serious picture, which turned out kind of fuzzy, so I'm including

our silly picture, which is funny because Katie is trying to be serious and you can clearly see she is unable to do this.

 

And Finally, Tree Rats
The Eastern gray squirrel is an invader in our parts, displacing our native Pacific Northwest squirrels and generally behaving like bushy-tailed rats with no sense of decorum or modesty. Apparently, they're even less-liked in Britain where D.T. Max writes of the effort to preserve the native red squirrel by exterminating those nasty Yankee grays.

Even Bigger News - Chinook At West Milton

It's hard to believe that there's any bigger news than the Citizen of the Month newsflash, but I think this tops it. This morning, while conducting a tour with folks from the Green Seattle Partnership, I saw Chinook salmon spawning at the West Milton Nature Preserve on the east branch of Hylebos Creek. There were two large fish, approx. 18-26 inches between the two, working a gravel area about halfway up the site. Also, two jack males were loitering about hoping to crash the party.

This is particularly exciting because we always assumed this branch would not attract Chinook and was suitable for smaller coho, chum and pinks. Plus, there is a certain excitement about successfully designing and building spawning habitat that the the Kings choose to use!

I've got to run, but I'll get some photos up later tonight.

A Couple for my Friend Rocky

Here's another slide show I'm preparing for the website, that was just too good not to add here. The fabulous West Milton Nature Preserve project before and after construction. Photos are courtesy Natural Systems Design, the site's designer and construction artistes:

And the reason we get such great work from our contractors is that I know a lot about motivational techniques, as this photo of me and Eric Doyle demonstrates.

Milton, Al and Will

Here's a nice story about one of my favorite small towns in our little watershed, the City of Milton is celebrating its centennial August 17th. What Steve didn't mention in his article is that little Ol' Milton is a great partner for Hylebos Creek Conservation and they have really supported us in some cutting edge restoration at the West Milton Nature Preserve. Happy Birthday, Milton!

Since we had our Al Gore moment and the tide of public opinion has shifted on global warming, the debate has tracked from "is it real?" to "What do we do?" Mostly, the answer has been some version of cap and trade schemes. The ever-persuasive James K. Galbraith, writing in Mother Jones, is one of the few writers who I've seen argue the obvious: we can't just cap and trade our way out of this. The response has to be a lot bigger and transformative.

As we glimpsed, in a relatively small way with Hurricane Katrina, the climate is a massive machine of energy. We've been pumping large amounts of energy into that machine and now we've got to ramp it down and quickly, changing fundamental underpinnings of human society.

Or, as Shakespeare:

So foul a sky clears not without a storm

Bill Shakespeare, playwright, poet, armchair climate scientist

You know, if I had a band today, I'd name it Vague Threat...