photos courtesy of Washington Conservation Corps
Washington Conservation Corps AmeriCorps members had a busy fall restoring critical habitat for native wildlife and building trails for public enjoyment and to help local ecosystems thrive. The WCC AmeriCorps program is set to have 285 members serve on various projects throughout the 2023-2024 service year. Here are some highlights of their accomplishments over the fall of 2023!
Supporting a thriving Puget Sound with the Department of Fish and Wildlife
In November, our forage fish crew ventured out on their first spike (multi-night trip) to assist the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, WDFW, with an ongoing mussel watch project. The crew prepped and placed mussel cages at seven locations throughout Puget Sound, including three cages in Hansville, one on the north shore of Belfair, one in Dewatto Bay, and two near Eastsound on Orcas Island.
"Each cage was set up at the zero-foot tide line with four bags of mussels attached to the cages," said WCC crew member Emily Stevenson. "These nighttime adventures kept us on our toes with sinking mud, exciting wildlife, and lots of laughs."
In a few months, the crew will retrieve the cages and send the mussels off to WDFW where biologists will assess them for key health indicators such as the presence of biotoxins, overall survivability, and mass. The results will help scientists locate pollution hot spots, understand their impact in Puget Sound, and inform future remediation plans.
Blazing trails with San Juan County Conservation Land Bank
Our Skagit County spike crew took a ferry to San Juan Island for a week of roughing in a new trail at Mount Grant Preserve. Managed by San Juan County Conservation Land Bank, the preserve is a 250-acre plot of forest and meadow with over 4 1/2 miles of trails for visitors to explore. Over the course of a week, we roughed in a connector trail from the new mid-mountain parking area to the Greywacke trailhead, constructed a wooden walkway built over a wet and marshy area, installed a culvert to redirect water, transplanted 75 native sword fern and Oregon grape shrubs around the new parking area and built 460 feet of new split rail fencing!
Restoring a clearcut with Oly Ecosystems
In Olympia, our Thurston County spike crew has been making big waves at the recently conserved Cooper Crest Forest. This legacy forest once provided shaded, cool water for salmon runs in Green Cove Creek. But logging in 2022, the area grew hotter and drier, impacting summer instream flows into the creek.
Not long after the logging, local nonprofit organization Oly Ecosystems teamed up with the city of Olympia to complete immediate restoration throughout the 23-acre clearcut. Our local WCC crew came to the site in 2023 to support large-scale plantings of willow, alder, cedar, and sequoia (2,600 and counting!) They also mulched and removed patches of invasive blackberry and Scotch broom.
This fall, we teamed up with several work-study students from The Evergreen State College to finish the construction of a stunning 60-step staircase for public use at the site.
"WCC has already provided hours of crew service through planting and invasive plant control," said WCC crew member Blane Reeves. "This new staircase will greatly help with providing access to the public where there once was a clear cut."
On the web: Washington Conservation Corps
