Yesterday was the first central People for Puget Sound work party of the year, at Hamm Creek on the Duwamish. We had a great group of about 70 people from Boeing, which was very heartening, as Boeing is laying off thousands, times are hard and the future is frightening, yet people still volunteer to spend a Saturday clearing blackberry in cold, dark misty weather. I was feeling under the weather, myself, and was therefore a terrible slacker, restricting myself to gatekeeping, registering new arrivals and getting all the necessary signatures for liability waivers, photo releases, and everything else that our litigious society requires. When the workers returned for lunch, I made the rounds of the site, doing a photo inventory to follow up on a site inventory from August. In the summer the site was a terrible mess, overrun with blackberry, scotch broom and other invasives. After several work parties of large volunteer groups it is once again looking beautiful. It just amazes and thrills me what willing hands can accomplish.
Hamm Creek is one of the earlier attempts at habitat restoration on the Duwamish, begun in 1999. The creek was put into a culvert as it came down from the ridge, under a highway and under riverfront property until released in the river. John Beal, a Vietnam veteran, led an effort to daylight and restore the creek. The culvert passed under property belonging to the public electric utility, who wished to preserve land use, so the daylighted creek was diverted around the extreme edge of the property on its way to the river. The site still shows wetland characteristics (wetland is a forbidden term and the utility is a client of my firm, so I hope I haven't already said too much). Contemporary, enlightened regulations would not have allowed such treatment of the creek, but as is the case all along this industrial river, time cannot be turned back. Habitat restoration is confined to very small defined areas, with the intent to make shoreline habitat for salmon. We apply legal definitions and boundaries - native habitat can be planted up to this line but across that line is developable property; the water can go over here but it must never go over there. Nature sometimes has other ideas.
When a restored creek increases freshwater flow into the river, the beavers find it and inhabit it. They don't understand legal boundaries, or that this is not really a naturally functioning ecosystem but just a small simulacrum, limited in scope. They cut down carefully planted and tended trees with their amazing chisel teeth, not realizing that there isn't a large self-replenishing supply of extended grove or forest attached, only that they want predator-free open space along their pond, food and building supplies for their dam. Their reality doesn't mesh with ours, that being one of only a few feet, a narrow band, of native plantings allowed along the creek. In some of the newer, larger restoration sites there is more room for plantings in all zones, from intertidal to riparian. They are still just tiny isolated specks. There are no groves for the beaver to clear spaces for grassy meadows, which then attract browsers and other creatures. They are strangers, interlopers, and many people have mixed feelings about them. They carry on in the way of their kind, regardless.
Hamm Creek is one of the earlier attempts at habitat restoration on the Duwamish, begun in 1999. The creek was put into a culvert as it came down from the ridge, under a highway and under riverfront property until released in the river. John Beal, a Vietnam veteran, led an effort to daylight and restore the creek. The culvert passed under property belonging to the public electric utility, who wished to preserve land use, so the daylighted creek was diverted around the extreme edge of the property on its way to the river. The site still shows wetland characteristics (wetland is a forbidden term and the utility is a client of my firm, so I hope I haven't already said too much). Contemporary, enlightened regulations would not have allowed such treatment of the creek, but as is the case all along this industrial river, time cannot be turned back. Habitat restoration is confined to very small defined areas, with the intent to make shoreline habitat for salmon. We apply legal definitions and boundaries - native habitat can be planted up to this line but across that line is developable property; the water can go over here but it must never go over there. Nature sometimes has other ideas.
When a restored creek increases freshwater flow into the river, the beavers find it and inhabit it. They don't understand legal boundaries, or that this is not really a naturally functioning ecosystem but just a small simulacrum, limited in scope. They cut down carefully planted and tended trees with their amazing chisel teeth, not realizing that there isn't a large self-replenishing supply of extended grove or forest attached, only that they want predator-free open space along their pond, food and building supplies for their dam. Their reality doesn't mesh with ours, that being one of only a few feet, a narrow band, of native plantings allowed along the creek. In some of the newer, larger restoration sites there is more room for plantings in all zones, from intertidal to riparian. They are still just tiny isolated specks. There are no groves for the beaver to clear spaces for grassy meadows, which then attract browsers and other creatures. They are strangers, interlopers, and many people have mixed feelings about them. They carry on in the way of their kind, regardless.
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