The West Hylebos Wetland is prime salmon habitat that is always in danger of being lost or destroyed. Recreating the wetland and restoring salmon habitat are one in the same. Whatever we do to one, ultimately effects the other. One of the objectives of The Friends of the Hylebos Wetland is to identify, acquire, and restore prime salmon habitat along both East and West Hylebos Creek, from it's source near the center of Federal Way to it's entry into Commencement Bay.
What does it take to accomplish such a monumental task? Plenty of volunteers who are willing to pour many, many hours of their precious blood, sweat, and tears into performing hard, manual labor under difficult and trying conditions. Where do these volunteers come from? Most of the frequent volunteers are people who have visited and fallen in love with the West Hylebos Wetland and formed an association with The Friends of the Hylebos. Sometimes Boy Scout or Girl Scout troops join our work parties in order to earn credit towards badges or promotions in rank. Sometimes students join our work parties to earn credit towards their community service. Most work parties consist of anywhere from eight to fifteen willing volunteers. During special events, such as on Earth Day, we may have as many as thirty or forty volunteers working on a single project, with a great many projects spread throughout the community. Volunteers pitch in to help, rain or shine, on warm days that bake their brains, as well as frosty days that freeze their fingers and toes. They work when the sun is shining and the ground is hard and they work when the park is one big muddy mire.
Recreating the wetland as nature intended it to be is not an easy task, nor is restoring salmon habitat. No one has ever published a book entitled, "Creating a wetland from scratch for dummies!". The process has involved several decades of trial and error. A wetland is comprised of many different layers of vegetation, all interconnected, and each depending upon the other for survival. The understory can't survive without the shade provided by fully-grown trees. It can takes decades for a single tree to reach maturity. What comes first? Where do you start? Although it's relatively easy to observe a wetland in action and determine how the various parts interact with one another, building a healthy wetland from scratch is quite another thing altogether.
One of the first things we attempted to do was clear the invasives, such as Himalayan blackberry and purple loosestrife, out of the park and away from the edges of the creek. Anyone who has ever attempted to clear Himalayan blackberry from their property knows what a challenge this can be. Our chosen plan of attack was to hack the blackberry bushes down as close to ground level as we possibly could then cover what was left with dense, black, garden fabric, pegging down the edges. We then left the fabric in place for two entire growing seasons, allowing the fabric to absorb and amplify the heat from the sun, literally baking the roots. At the end of two growing seasons, we removed the black cloth, shoveled up the dead roots, and replanted the area with native vegetation, such as: salmon berries, snow berries, huckleberries, ferns, willow stakes, and tree seedlings.
During this clearing and replanting process, we attempted to improve the condition of the creek itself by building ELWDs. ELWD stands for Engineered Large Woody Debris. Good salmon habitat requires good gravel, well oxygenated water, and lots of cool pools and riffles where the salmon can hide and rest; plus, of course, salmon ladders to help them climb up steep grades. In nature, trees die and fall into the creek creating the necessary pools and riffles, but West Hylebos Creek lacked these fallen trees. Instead of robbing the wilderness of old growth forest in order to create pools and riffles in the creek, The Friends of the Hylebos contracted with a company that used smaller logs and pegs to manufacture the equivalent of an old-growth log. Of course, they only provided the material and instructions. Volunteers provided the blood, sweat, and tears.
Each ELWD required eight large heavy logs, which were dumped in the field at the blueberry farm. Volunteers, four to a log, had to pick each of these logs up and, carefully carry them over uneven ground, over hills, down dips, and around trees, until they reached the edge of the creek. Once they had moved all eight logs to the side of the creek, they then had to assemble the logs with pegs, in accordance with the instructions provided by the company, leaving the top of the ELWD open.
Next came buckets of rocks. Many, many heavy buckets of rocks were picked up by volunteers and lugged from the field to the partially-constructed ELWD, where they were then stuffed into the hole in the top of the ELWD to act as ballast. After that, the top log was pegged on and the newly-constructed ELWD was chained up and bolted into the creek bed so that it couldn't be swept away in a storm. Community volunteers willingly constructed several dozen ELWDs in both East and West Hylebos Creek.
Another thing we experimented with was something we called hummocks. A company was found that built these biodegradable donuts out of coir, which is a product made from coconut fiber. We would clear an area the best we could, cover it with cardboard, place one of these coir donuts on top, fill the center of the donut with dirt, then stuff as many different kinds of plants as we could into the dirt. We had no idea whether this idea would work or not, nor any idea which plants would grow under these conditions and which would keel over and drop dead in two shakes of a lamb's tail, so we tended to over-plant these hummocks by cramming as much into them as we possibly could. Then, all we could do was step back and hope for the best. During one of these hummock-creating parties, I found a hummock on the edge of the West Milton Nature Preserve that was being neglected and planted that entire hummock by myself. Chris, Adele, and I immediately named it "The Lenfest Hummock". The last time that I visited my hummock the trees I'd planted as tiny seedlings had grown so large that they towered over my head. Insert big sappy grin here.
The Friends of the Hylebos kept an inventory of everything we planted and volunteers usually returned to a planting site the following year to re-inventory the plants that were growing there. In that way, we were able to determine which plants thrived under those conditions and which failed to survive the ordeal. It was always exciting to see how big our plants had grown in a year.
Many of the same volunteers showed up for each project, including Mark and Adele Freeland. You could always count on some people being there, no matter what kind of weather Mother Nature threw at us. Many of these same volunteers held elected positions with The Friends of the Hylebos.
Hylebos Creek begins underground, somewhere in the vicinity of The Commons shopping mall. Dividing into East and West forks, the creek winds it's way back and forth, alongside of and beneath Pacific Highway South, eventually hanging west at Fife and wending it's way through the industrial area until it finally pours itself into Commencement Bay in Tacoma. For many decades, the sediment on the floor of Commencement Bay, at the mouth of the West Hylebos Creek, has tested out to be the most heavily-polluted in all of Puget Sound. When standing on the 4th St bridge, in the Lower Fife Marsh, you can often see the multi-colored gleam of polluting chemicals that have leached out of the creek bottom to float on the surface of the water. People who live along that area of the creek have told me that shiny film is so caustic that it will burn your skin if you touch it. I have been told by noted environmental scientists that saving West Hylebos Creek is a lost cause, the vast amount of pollutants in the creek and bay are insurmountable.
And yet, the salmon still return, year after year. River otters cruise up and down the creek in search of tasty salmon morsels. Great blue herons wade in the shallows. Beavers have returned and built five dams in the lower Fife marsh. Bright blue belted kingfishers sit in the branches, cocking their Mohawks at you. Paired mallards swim along the creek, tipping their tails up in the air as they search for food. These are all living proof that all is not lost yet and that this beautiful creek is still worth fighting for.
In spite of all of this negative environmental news, courageous volunteers with The Friends of the Hylebos Wetland and EarthCorps continue to work towards restoring this wetland habitat for the sake of the salmon, other wildlife that depend upon it, our children, our grandchildren, and our community. We have cleared invasives, planted native species, built ELWDs, created hummocks, cleared crane canary grass, and even moved areas of the creek from one location to another, restoring it's bends and curves, ripples and pools, and beautiful gravel beds. As long as the salmon continue returning to the creek to spawn, as long as the great blue herons, river otters, muskrats, and beavers entertain us with their antics, we will never give up hope.
If you would like to join a work party, contact Lili Allala at [email protected] or Margery Godfrey at [email protected]. If you want to know more about the West Hylebos Wetland, contact Teri Lenfest at [email protected].
Teri Lenfest
Comments