Outdoors
When it comes to wetlands restoration, I’m a sucker for a good work party.
Whether it means putting the moves on the business end of a scotch broom puller or doing the rubber boot rhumba with an armful of native sedges, not only am I willing to get down… I’m willing to get down and dirty.
So, after the time-consuming rigors of a never-ending home-improvement project managed to obliterate my customary schedule of volunteerism this past spring summer and fall, I felt compelled to cram as much riparian revery into the waning moments of 2011 as my social calendar allowed.
The first shindig I got to—a half-day mulch-spreading foray into a place called Smuggler’s Slough—brought me directly into the marshy tidal-charged front lines of a collaborative ongoing effort to liberate the natural free-flowing contours of the Nooksack River estuary from the impedimentary infrastructure of dikes, ditches and causeways that have been fouling up the tidal fluctuation capacity down there for the better part of the past 100 years.
Spearheaded by Lummi Nation, the primary goals of this ambitious endeavor are to 1) restore seven miles of salmon-friendly slough habitat 2) re-establish 640 acres of salt marsh habitat and 3) improve water quality for 1,600 acres of shellfish habitat in Lummi Bay.
Although my personal contribution to the project was relegated primarily to bucket-humping, wheelbarrow-hauling and the occasional random burst of motivational singing, I did walk away from the festivities buoyed sufficiently by the fact that the freshly re-forested swath of ground I’d just helped establish will nurture and protect juvenile salmon migrating downstream by allowing them to leave the main stem of the river and take refuge in a slower moving side channel where they can feed and grow stronger before heading out into the ocean.
Next, for my final gala event of the season, I zoomed out to the south end of Lake Whatcom to join a small but gregarious posse of local restorationists in denuding scores of invasive English holly trees from the premises of one of Whatcom Land Trust’s newest acquisitions—a 101-acre farmstead called “Ladies of the Lake.”
Along with being situated directly behind that formerly impressive but now sadly derelict roadside attraction The Ranchette, this fish-friendly property owns the distinction of hugging the braided alluvial banks of a slim but spunky kokanee-bearing stream called Fir Creek—one of the many minor, yet no less important, freshwater tributaries which help sustain the most prolific but increasingly vulnerable native populations of landlocked salmon on the West Coast.
Serendipitously to that, the place attracts a fairly impressionable scattering of bald eagles.
In fact, while crossing a bridge over the creek to our project site, there were so many of those big burly predators hulking in branches nearby that every visible kokanee in the stream seemed to be hiding out with so much conviction beneath the protective concrete span that, when we finally passed back over it several hours later, nary a one of them appeared to have moved.
If, like me, you can hardly wait to see what incomparable natural wonders the 2012 will bring, I am glad to report that Whatcom Land Trust and Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association have teamed up to offer an ideal venue to kick-off the work party season.
See you on the South Fork!
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