Groups band together in fight against weeds
December 9, 2008
By J.B. Wogan
This story is the final installment in a series about attempts to help preserve the environment by fighting invasive plants.
Craig Gallagher, heavy equipment supervisor for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, surveys 52 logs planted along Lake Sammamish in July, improving habitat for native plants, insects and fish. Photo by J.B. Wogan.
A quiet war against nonnative plants is taking place in and around Sammamish.
The players are a loosely united coalition of city and county agencies, combined with local volunteers, nonprofits and private businesses, determined to fend off nonnative vegetation in the area.
At the Lower Commons, due east of City Hall, 19 women from the Sammamish Garden Club have agreed to act as stewards of a native plant bed. The kickoff ceremony for their restoration project took place Sept. 4.
Linda Hines, a member of both the Sammamish Garden Club and the Washington Native Plant Society, said having native plants around is beneficial to the community from a conservation standpoint.
“Native plants are so adaptable to the ecosystem and they will save water,” she said.Nonnative plants, not adjusted to this region’s rain cycles and climate, require more water and attention, according to Hines. In a time when water conservation is becoming a major environmental issue, devoting resources to maintaining native vegetation is a must, she said.
Hines and her colleagues at the Sammamish Garden Club plan to stifle nonnative plants such as butterfly bush and Scotch broom, replacing them with indigenous alternatives such as grand firs and black hawthorne.
Their project at Sammamish Commons is just one of several volunteer efforts across the city to manage nonnative vegetation.
“We’re trying to get the neighborhoods to work together to get rid of the blackberries and any types of invasive weeds that are there,” said Kathy Curry, senior environmental planner for the city. “At the city itself, we’re trying to keep on top of that, but there’s limited staff and there’s a big area.”
On the Lake Sammamish shoreline, nonnative vegetation can lead to erosion, destabilizing waterfront property and simultaneously hampering wetlands ecosystems.
“We have just about every one you can imagine,” said Tor MacIlroy, a restoration program manager for the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust. Policeman’s helmet, Himalayan blackberry, garden and purple loosestrife, and Japanese knotweed all exist on the shoreline. With the exception of Himalayan blackberry, those weeds probably arrived in the area after local residents planted them in the garden for aesthetic appeal.
MacIlroy’s organization has been instrumental in removing invasive plants and replacing them with native trees and shrubs at Lake Sammamish State Park in Issaquah.
One Mountains to Sound restoration project in July involved removing weeds from a strip of shoreline near Issaquah Creek — a tributary of Lake Sammamish — planting a row of 52 wood logs and a buffer zone of native willows.
“The purpose is to provide protection for juvenile salmonoid fish,” explained Greg Johnston, a senior fisheries biologist for The Watershed Company. The company does environmental consulting for landscape architecture, helping private residents and public entities, such as state parks, plan for problems with erosion and pollution.
“Millions of juvenile fish are going to come through Issaquah Creek and into Lake Sammamish,” Johnston said.
Ecosystems are complicated enough to muddy a simple cause-and-effect scenario between invasive plants and native wildlife, Johnston said.
But there is evidence to suggest that Japanese knotweed and policeman’s helmet are indirectly impacting fish in Lake Sammamish in a negative way, he said.
There are three major types of fish matriculating through Issaquah Creek: Coho salmon, cutthroat salmon and Chinook salmon. All three feast on terrestrial and aquatic insects, which tend to exist in larger quantities when there is a healthy dose of shade and large wooded areas along the shoreline. Japanese knotweed and policeman’s helmet have effectively destroyed those natural enclosures for insects, thus reducing the food supply to the fish in the process.
Johnston said that the Issaquah Creek restoration project was unusual because of the sheer number of parties that had to cooperate to remove the weeds, plant native vegetation and install the logs and willows.
For that one project, two cities, a state parks and recreation commission, and members of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, plus the Mountains to Sound Greenway, joined together.
“It’s somewhat of a miracle that this actually all happened,” Johnston said. “We can’t really believe we got it done.”
MacIlroy agreed.
“It’s been neat to see all these different groups involved. There’s been a lot of energy in terms of putting these things together. It would take a long time for me to list all the groups who have helped out here.”
Reporter J.B. Wogan can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 247, or jbwogan@isspress.com.
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