Earth Day was born out of a movement to improve the lives of people and nature, inspiring sweeping legislative action and investments. Today, federal infrastructure funding and WA Climate Commitment Act are a continuation of this movement, investments making a tangible impact locally. As an example, Washington’s historic funding of the Floodplains by Design program is contributing to nature-based floodplain management across the state to reduce flood risk, protect communities and protect salmon habitat. These state and federal dollars are just the start of local climate action that will improve the daily lives and the future of all Washingtonians.
Meet DeAnne Hamilton: Learn how the general manager of Tacoma’s KBTC Public Television and TNC in Washington trustee, uses the power of storytelling to engage people in conservation and create a better future for the next generation.
Nestled in the cliffs in Moses Coulee is an import desert water sources that every springs attracts thousands of Pacific Tree frogs. I came to Whisper Lake for a night concert. It was anything but quiet. The chorus of frogs was soothing, calming—the quintessential sound of spring.
The Cle Elum Wildlife Project is improving our understanding of how wildlife use and move through protected forest landscapes, providing us with an opportunity to test how forest management practices impact wildlife and building an evidence base for permanent protection.
Written and Photographed by Emily Howe, Conservancy Aquatic Ecologist
The trouble with field biology is that every once in a while, your best laid experimental designs are obliterated by a typhoon.
Such was the case last week, when Typhoon Songda blasted across the Pacific and slammed into the Washington coast. Puget Sound was spared the brunt of the winds, as the storm was compact and tracked 60 miles further northwest than expected. The coast, however, was spared nothing in terms of rain and wind, clocking in 78 mph gusts and 3" of rain in a 24 hr period.
Now, I'd carefully planned to retrieve all my stream temperature loggers from Hurst and Shale creeks on Thursday and Friday, October 13th and 14th. By Tuesday, we knew of a weather system coming for the end of the week. By Wednesday, Cliff Mass was forecasting a mega-storm. We watched the storm track, the rain forecasts, and wind forecasts. We watched the low pressure depression, and the storm size. We translated wind speed to tree strengths. And we tried to translate rainfall to river height. That's tricky for a system that doesn't have a gauge on it.
In the end, we cancelled.
We crossed our fingers that the loggers would hold through the storm, waited a few days for a break in the weather, and headed west to the Clearwater Basin near Kalaloch.
I took my sister as my intrepid volunteer. She worked in the ONP for years revegetating high alpine meadows and living out of her tent in the drenching rain. She's a well vetted bushwhacker with the highest of credentials.
We arrived at Hurst Creek to find the downstream reach below our 6 log jams roaring. The river was only knee-deep, but was so swift that I could barely stand. That first logger was long gone, probably taking temps in the Pacific Ocean by now.
The river stretches between the log jams were deep, slow moving pools. I could safely wade out to my ribcage without losing my footing. The only problem was that my loggers were anchored to the creek bed and my arms are not 4 feet long. But, I'm a water person, and getting wet is par for the course. If I laid my face on the water, and submerged my neck and shoulder, I could just barely reach the loggers.
The upper jam on Hurst is an incredible sight. We knew last summer that it was doing its job to trap sediment and rebuild the stream bed in an intensely downcut section of the creek, but what we didn't see last summer was the immense collection of leaf litter that it also traps. Right now, there are literally two islands in the creek built entirely of leaves and twigs. They are about 20 ft long, 5 feet wide, and 3 ft thick. If you stand on them, you sink up to your knees in leaves. This is nutrient storage in action. This is how streams hang on to energy at the base of the food web. This is how productivity is conserved in flowing waters.
In the end, we retrieved 6 of 11 loggers on Hurst, and only 1 of 4 on Shale. The storm beat me by a day, but the fish welcomed the pulse of freshwater. Indeed, we watched the first scouts nose their way up Shale, easily passing through a tangle of natural log jams on their way.
Written by Tammy Kennon
Photographed by Hannah Letinich, Volunteer Photo Editor
Emily Howe remembers a time when there were so many salmon, “they would bump your ankles. You could pet them!”
Emily, the Washington Nature Conservancy’s newest staff member, saw those fin-to-fin salmon as a child while camping with her family at Lake Wenatchee on the east side of the Cascades. But over the years as her family returned to the same stream, she watched those salmon dwindle, a firsthand observation of how humans impact the environment that launched a career.
After completing a biology degree at Vermont’s Middlebury College, she continued her education at the University of Washington, Seattle, earning an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Aquatic and Fishery Science.
To add real life experience to her education, Emily studied abroad in the San Blas Islands, off the Caribbean coast of Panama, and in Tanzania, an opportunity to “further how we think about land and people.”
“You can’t leave the people out; you have to integrate them,” Emily says. “We’re trying to figure out how to transform our daily lives to include nature, to offer natural solutions. We don’t have to have a negative impact. It can positive.”
In her new role as Aquatic Ecologist, Emily has come full circle. She will focus on salmon recovery, measuring the success of Nature Conservancy land and freshwater restoration efforts.
“We’re trying to get back to a system that works and functions more naturally,” Emily says. “Sometimes that’s building something that works like nature does.”
The Nature Conservancy efforts include rebuilding logjams to restore ecological processes in streams and bringing clear cut slopes back to their critical and natural place in the ecosystem.
Emily lives in Seattle with her husband and two children, 2 and 5 years old. They go camping, hiking, biking, clam digging, and other outdoor pursuits, “trying to get as dirty as we can.”
Daniel Misch is the new Arid Lands Assistant Manager at the Moses Coulee/Beezley Hills Preserves.
He’ll be leading post-fire restoration projects and assisting with many other stewardship activities on the preserves.
Herman Flamenco is joining our Forest team as the Conservation Forester for the Central Cascades.
Maia Murphy-Williams is the Science Program Specialist at the Nature Conservancy in Washington. As the Science program specialist Maia manages the day-to-day operations of the science team and supports The Nature Conservancy’s portfolio of science projects through ecological research, fieldwork, communications, and partnerships.
David Mendoza as our Director of Public Advocacy and Engagement. In this new role, David will work with and lead our government relations team, build coalitions and strengthen the environmental movement in the state, and work to pass policies at the state and federal level that advance our mission and priorities.
Kathy Woodward, Projects and Innovation Manager for The Nature Conservancy, is working to address chronic barriers to Puget Sound recovery by bringing a design thinking approach to conservation and putting people at the center of creative problem solving.
As Quantitative Ecologist, Ailene develops the evidence base for The Nature Conservancy’s efforts to protect and restore lands in Washington. Ailene earned a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Washington, focusing on community ecology, climate change, and urban ecology.
Volunteer programs are a great way to introduce new audiences to the work The Nature Conservancy does and tothe environmental field in general. Volunteers are also mission critical for The Nature Conservancy to accomplish our work.
Michael is a forest ecologist who studies forests, critters, and how people affect them. Much of his research has focused on the impacts of climate change and how people can build resilience in the face of such changes.
“You can’t see the entire world from the top of Everest…..The view from there only reminds you how big the world is and how much more there is to see and learn.”
