HyleBlog - Friends of the Hylebos

Ruby Dance 2009 Photos

I've just got our Ruby Dance 2009 photos on a Flickr photostream. If you were there, you know what fun we had. If you weren't able to join us, make sure you join us next year!

Speaking of Ruby Dance, I'm hearing reports of salmon (probably coho, but possibly some chinook) heading upstream from the Lower Hylebos! This rainy weather is sure to draw the spawners deep into the upper Hylebos.  

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Tugging at Nature: A Video of the Hylebos

Check this out. A Video produced by Sean MacLean and Doug Brauns and shown at Ruby Dance.

A Flood of Ruby Dance Thoughts

Last night was our September board meeting (which we moved to October, due to Ruby Dance. We then moved our October meeting to Nov. 2nd becoming our November October meeting, and we'll close up shop for the year with a joint November-December meeting in December. Confused?!) which was used to review and discuss Ruby Dance results.

The overall verdict is that the event was very successful. We beat our financial goals and had very good attendance in a down year. We've gotten plenty of feedback that the event was very enjoyable. The new items - a live auction and paddle raise - were quite successful.

Of course, it wasn't perfect, and we want to learn from the mistakes and challenges, and try to make the following year's event. We spent some time listing the things that didn't work out as positively as we'd liked. We'll take the pluses and minuses back to our event steering committee, mull things over and make recommendations for RD 2010.

There really isn't much of a gap between the end of one event and the beginning of planning for next year's event.

From flood of support to real world flooding: Keith Ervin writes about the challenges Howard Hanson Dam (and everything downstream) is facing. The details of the decisions on how to construct the dam, and the history that's led up to where we are today, is rather fascinating for this water-bug. Two factors in this story are very interesting to me:

1)  The decision in the 1950s to build the dam with the existing earthen abutment and leave the issue of what to do with (the quite real possibility of) leaks that might occur to future generations (aka "us").

2)  The cumulative decisions by government and individuals to populate the Green River floodplain. Even though that in itself isn't remarkable - its a pattern as old as human history - in the current situation, with the potential for serious flooding looming, it's worth looking at that floodplain, and asking ourselves whether we've overlooked the natural systems

The City of Seattle is re-mapping its creeks' floodplains. Because I don't spend much time there, I don't really think of Seattle as having creeks. But i have toured quite  a bit of the Thornton Creek Watershed (thanks to Rocky), and they've got the same dynamic (though on a much smaller scale) as the Green River. Houses are built right next to the creek. Yards run right up to the creek. Bank armoring is plentiful to defend against erosion.

The challenge for urban floodplains (and let's face it, much of the Green River floodplain is), is now that we have people living (and working) in large numbers in the path of the 100-year, or even 10-year storm, how do we make the best of the situation. Can we re-strike the balance between flood functions and flood management?

Hylebos Community Makes Ruby Dance A Success

Everyone knows this is a tough economy, and a lot of nonprofits are really working extra, extra hard to make their events a success. It's a struggle. While we certainly worked extra hard, we were successful in a lot of ways with Ruby Dance. Read about them in my latest Thinking Locally column. And thanks again for your support!

Ruby Dance Award Winners

We're still digging ourselves out from Ruby Dance, doing our financials and writing our thank yous...and putting out the publicity. I just finished a column for the Mirror about RD '09.

We will be getting photos on our website soon, but in the meantime here's a photo of our 2009 award winners. They are Ron Larson, Francis and Ilene Marckx Wetland Award for volunteer of the year, Thais Bock, Ted Enticknap Lifetime Stewardship Award, General Metals, the Innovation in Conservation Award, and former Board President Eric Stavney wins our special Golden Boot Award.

From L to R, FOH President Margery Godfrey, Ron Larson, Eric Stavney, Thais Bock, King County Councilman Pete von Reichbauer, Yours Truly, and Jim Jakubiak of General metals.

Ruby Dance Is In The Bag...

(...that means it's over). Our 5th Annual Ruby Dance benefit dinner Saturday night was simply amazing!

First of all, to get nearly 200 people to attend during the present economic situation was well, stunning. And the crowd...the guests were, once again, a great mixture of great folks - elected officials, champions of the Hylebos, volunteers, friends of conservation...heck, friends of conversation, artists, musicians, talkers, doers...etc. you get the idea.

I absolutely love the people who support this organization. You won't find a better, more interesting mix of people. But, I digress.

I don't have the full financial count on the evening yet (so stay tuned) but in every other mark, the event was a winner. Gene Duvernoy gave a witty, thought-provoking keynote. Sean MacLean was his usual brilliant self. We had a new feature, a live auction, and we were treated to a real virtuoso performance by auctioneer MacKenzie Allen. It was a demonstration of the Ol' "give til it feels good." 

I'll have more later, but for now, my report is Ruby Dance was interesting, entertaining and fun...and, it's done!

Ignominious End for Old-Growth Trees

Fortunately, today started off better than yesterday; i was able to obtain my caffeine fix without being accused of traitoring.

The office looks different every morning, as auction items are being delivered, moved, processed and moved again. There are some serious good items for the auction. I've got my eyes on the Chocolicious basket!

So, you know, you don't want to miss Ruby Dance. Give us a call at 253-874-2005 to get your tickets!

As for this news item, I was surprised to see that TP is still being made from old growth trees. I'm as into soft, cushy tissue as the next person. Making it out of 200-year-old trees, though, seems just foolish. Particualrly, when recycled paper is a feasible option.

While TP only accounts for 5% of US paper products, some argue there's a matter of principle here:

"It's like the Hummer product for the paper industry," said Allen Hershkowitz, senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "We don't need old-growth forests . . . to wipe our behinds."

I can agree with that.

See you Saturday!

Ruby Dance Excitement Building - Office Filling Up

Four days away and counting. We're at that stage where the event is like a freight train bearing down us -

but it's a freight of fun! The office is filling up with auction items being prepared for saturday night. Here we have Margery, Alix & Rachel with some of the goodies (man, I really want that foldable wagon/cart donated by Ace Hardware (Dash Point)).

Going Batty over Spawning and Ruby Dance

Is this serendipitous synchronicity or not? The last song on the last song on KEXP was "C'mon Let's Spawn" by The Make-Up...and it's spawning season in the Hylebos...and it's Ruby Dance season. Less than two weeks to go until Ruby Dance 2005, our annual benefit and awards dinner. If you don't have your reservations, call us. You don't want to miss it!

Of course, RD is what I'm working on all day long here. There's lots to do with a special event and the entire staff and board and volunteers, are working hard to get everything in place for the 26th.

In the meantime, here are a couple of news itmes that caught my attention today:

Eeek! There's MRSA on our beaches. No more burying me in the sand on beach day.

Given their nocturnal lifestyle its easy to overlook bats and their importance to our ecosystems (think insect control and that's one thing to be thankful for), so its good to see that researchers are monitoring local bat populations, in light of the White-nose disease that's caused bat populations to crash elsewhere.
So far, it doesn't appear to be here.

More than 1 million bats already have perished in what one expert described as the most precipitous decline in American wildlife in recorded history. Extinctions are likely if the white-nose disease continues to spread, and could lead to a population explosion of mosquitoes and other insect pests normally held in check by the winged predators.

Pent-Up Blogging

Man, have I been busy this week. I haven't had time to blog appropriately. So, here is a blog dump of all the things I had intended to parcel out slowly over the last 5 days.

SR 167 Record of Decision Signed
The SR 167 Highway project has reached a milestone in the signing last week of the federal Record of Decision on the Final Environmental Impact Statement. The plan is now official, including all the Hylebos conservation work.

That effort, now known as the Riparian Restoration Program, will preserve and restore up to 190 acres of lower Hylebos Creek, constituting a very large, important chunk of the Hylebos Creek Conservation Initiative.

Tuesday, the WSDOT SR 167 Project team convened the first meeting of the RRP Technical Advisory Group (TAG), of which the Friends is a member. The RRP TAG will help guide design details for the RRP. The group also includes members from federal and state resource agencies and the Puyallup and Muckleshoot Tribes.

More Meetings...
Also convened the Hylebos Watershed Action Committee yesterday. It was a light turnout, so the meeting was mostly information sharing

Let's see Hillary and I also met with Rocky and Alan from Natural Systems Design to begin design on a 2008 East Hylebos Creek project known as the "Picket Fence Project." We also discussed wrapping up our West Hylebos Wetlands forest health assessment...and began a process to develop a conceptual design for restoration of a large zone of the watershed in the Milton area. Exciting work happening with NSD!

Oh, yeah, and last night, Sheila and I met with our outstanding volunteers from the Ruby Dance Steering Committee to debrief on this year's event and begin looking toward the 2008 RD. Less than a month removed from the big event and we're already excited about next year's shindig! We're either insane or Ruby Dance is a great event...or...we could be both!

In between the meetings, I've been working on developing our 2008 budget and developing some program ideas I've had for awhile into something more concrete. I'll have more on that later.

With that, I think I've successfully exorcised my pent-up blogging and will conclude this with my wishes to you for a great weekend!