HyleBlog - Friends of the Hylebos

Hylebos Days Photos

I've been catching up on the website and some of the great photos of our events. Here is a Flickr slideshow I put together from Hylebos Days. Thanks to Seth Bynum for sharing the photos with us!

Hylebos Days II At The West Hylebos

Saturday came off great as we unveiled the park's Welcome sign and dedicated the interpretive signage system. Lots and lots of folks came through the park yesterday, enjoying the sunshine and a relaxing stroll through the park.

I had the pleasure of touring the park with several of our supporters, including Barry and Lisa Johnson, and their daughter Annika, Kathy Olson and Mark & Joni Herwick. In addition, it was a great day to just meet people, answer questions, and enjoy the world's greatest place.

We'll be at the park again today from 11 to 4, so come on out for a Mother's Day treat - I meant the park, but we will also have cake to give to mothers.

Thanks to King County Councilman Pete von Reichbauer, State Rep. Skip Priest, Federal Way Mayor Jack Dovey, and Federal Way Councilmembers Jeanne Burrbidge and Dini Duclos and Judge Mark Eide for joining us for the sign dedication. Also, a big thanks to my board - President Bob Roegner, Vice-President Margery Godfrey, Secretary Rus Higley (who manned the MaST Center for Seth Bynum's presentation), Julie Brauns, Trish Bennett, and Chris Kelsey.

Now, with that said, here is an article on endangered Puget Sound Abalone.

Hylebos Days Are Coming (Rain is Going)

Three days away! Tonight, the Federal Way City Council will read the proclamation for Hylebos Days and then it will all be a blur (!) until Saturday when Hylebos Days gets started and we officially dedicate and unveil the park's new interpretive signage.

It has been raining and stormy all day, but the forecast for Saturday and Sunday is sunshine. Keep your fingers crossed!

One of the keystone events of Hylebos Days will be Seth Bynum's presentation: Hylebos - A Photographic Perspective. Seth has been photographing the wetlands for the past 5 years and has stories and visions to share. He is a very gifted photographer and really has created a treasure of images of our beloved wetlands.

Seth's book of photographs will be available for sale at the event and Seth will be signing copies of the book. Don't miss this event!

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.

Links Fixed

Thanks to an alert HyleBlogster tipping me to broken links from this site to the park and directions pages on our website. Those have now been fixed.

I met today with the Buds & Blooms Committee. We're going to celebrate Hylebos Day in conjunction with the Buds & Blooms Festival taking place May 9th and 10th. I'll have more details on this later, but this is a brilliant way to enhance the public awareness of the park and draw people to the park.

Thanks to Federal Way City Council

I went to the Federal Way City Council meeting last night to thank the council for their support of the West Hylebos Wetlands and the successful completion of the West Hylebos Boardwalk project (officially completed with the installation of the interpretive signs last week!). Mayor Jack Dovey saw me as I arrived and recruited me to lead the flag salute. That was a first for me (at least since something like First Grade).

Anyhow, the city council and city staff did great work to help make this project happen. If you see a council member, be sure to tell them how much you appreciate their support for the Hylebos.

The Sad Decline of Frogs
The Friends' old friend Klaus Richter is one of a few scientists parsing out the decline or red-legged frogs and other native amphibians in King County and the urban Puget Sound area (a.k.a Pugetopolis). Lynda Mapes writes in the Times of what science is telling us about the decline of amphibians and the mismatch between environmental regulations and the facts of the amphibian lifecycle.

What [scientists] found was a misfit between development regulations and the actual lives of amphibians. The animals' movements through the seasons of the year don't fit into tidy buffer zones, drawn in tight circles around breeding ponds. The wetlands they use for breeding and rearing are protected, but the success of those regulations is problematic. And too often, roads slice right through the migratory corridors amphibians use, and development devours the forests they need to live in much of the year.

n seven of 18 King County wetlands surveyed between 1993 and 1997, Klaus O. Richter, a senior ecologist for King County, found native species declined and some even disappeared.

"It's not just the wetland alone that is really important," Richter said. "They only use the wetlands for two weeks to a month, a very limited time, when they go to the wetlands to breed. But then they go to the forest to live their lives, and what we have found is that the forests are disappearing, and getting smaller, and the access to them is declining because of our sprawl."

Anecdotally, red-legged frogs seem to be thriving in the Hylebos, but Richter reminds us that amphibian species can disappear without humans even knowing.

"I've been going back [to a monitoring site near Bellevue] and looking, and I haven't seen a toad," Richter said. He sees a diminishing, not only of the food chain and biological diversity of the area, but of the human pleasure in living in a place so alive. "It's sad," he said, "they are just gone. People don't even know what used to be here. It's the extinction of experience."

Mapes' article reminds us of the importance of protected & interconnected habitat. Species often have life cycle niches that transcend one habitat type. The Hylebos Creek Conservation Initiative is so important for our watershed because it seeks to protect habitat across the habitat zones from wetland, riparian and upland forests.

If we're successful, perhaps the red-legged frogs will continue to thrive in the Hylebos.

West Hylebos Photos

A few pics from my trip to the park earlier this week:

Morning in the Hylebos, an image that sings to the eyes and the spirit.

These ducks were so intent on the good algae near the Brooklake viewing platform that they didn't pay any attention to Tamera and I.

A large tree fallen across the Deep Sink.

Signs at the West Hylebos!

I just got back from the West Hylebos Wetlands, where the new interpretive signs have been installed. The signs look brilliant! Tamera and I took some photos. I'll get those up here and at the website later today. Stay tuned!!

In the meantime, post mortem from the storms. There are a few thousand tons of sand on Seattle streets and presumably around the Hylebos, too. 

It seems like every time we have a big storm, somebody writes about the obvious (that we and others keep talking about in between storms), that removing critical parts of nature's stormwater management system - i.e. forests, wetlands, floodplains - is making our predictably regular winter storms more damaging. 

Less forestland, more development and altered rivers mean when big storms come, the natural landscape can't slow down the water, and soak it up. Instead of dissipating into the ecosystem over days, the rain becomes a flood of runoff, sluicing and blasting off roofs, pavement, and barreling down — and out — of rivers with no where to put it all.

"Every couple of years we have this, and I tell the same story," said Robert Naiman, a University of Washington professor and an expert on rivers. "Yet we continue to build and allow expensive structures and roads into floodplains, and we try to unnaturally constrain the rivers into something they won't do."

And this one is in the Ripley's Believe It Or Not file. When is an activity just too damaging to allow? And when will we actually require adherence to the Clean Water Act?

Cold But Beautiful in the Hylebos

Today, I met Matt Perry, who is the new field representative for Congressman Adam Smith (9th District), covering environmental issues. Matt and I toured the Lower Hylebos Marsh, West Hylebos Wetlands and Spring Valley Ranch this afternoon.

Although it was cold (reeeallly cold), it was an incredible day in the Hylebos: stark and crisp. Lower Hylebos and Spring Valley Ranch are growing; even with the leaves off the deciduous trees, the wetland vegetation was manifest, asserting itself over the floodplains, while the red osier dogwood and alders are growing tall spires toward the sky. (although, someone has taken it upon themselves to "prune" the alders at LHM. More on that later).

The West Hylebos boardwalk was still caked in packed snow/ice in some areas and the waters were high, though not at flood stage. The boardwalk decking suffered its first casualty down near the T intersection towards Brooklake. A large alder branch speared the edge of the boardwalk, gouging out a 12-inch piece of the decking.

Also of note, the no-slip decking is getting slippery, as algae builds up on it. This is something we're probably going to have to address with Parks, sooner rather than later.

So, a big Hylebos welcome to Matt Perry. I look forward to working with him and thank him for a reason to spend 2 hours outside on a beautiful winter day!