By Sarah Brown, NSEA Stewardship Program Coordinator
For the last 30 years, NSEA has worked with thousands of dedicated community members to restore degraded habitat throughout Whatcom County to keep salmon here for future generations. Continuing this work through the COVID-19 pandemic has posed unique challenges, and last fall we adapted our Community Work Parties into micro, pandemic-safe versions where volunteers could safely join us in fulfilling our mission to keep wild salmon here for future generations. This new system was a huge success with 139 volunteers restoring over an acre of habitat since last October. With the triumph of the fall season, we have worked to make this spring even better by offering twice as many opportunities as usual for our community go get outside and join like-minded peers in helping our local environment.
We are continuing to adapt and improve the safety policies and procedures that are in place while we make our way through the COVID-19 pandemic. All precautionary measures that were implemented in the fall have carried over into this season, including requiring volunteers to register and reserve their spot online through nsea.volunteerhub.com. We are also introducing group registration to the process! This makes signing up easier by allowing members of your group to register at the work party while still reserving their spots. Other safety measures are still in place, and more details can be found in our COVID-19 policies and procedures. We look forward to more usual programming when safe to do so, but until then we want to thank our community for their patience and support as we continue to work through this challenging time together!
NSEA’s Program Team is so grateful to have volunteers come out each week, and the passion, dedication, and enthusiasm we continue to see from our community is what drives us to make each of these opportunities better than the week before. We will restore streamside habitat along ten different creeks across Whatcom County this spring by planting native trees and shrubs, removing invasive vegetation, and picking up trash. We have also worked to improve our outreach booth by providing more information about the distribution of the five Pacific salmon species in Washington State and an easier way to learn about water quality with the help of bugs! Sign up to join us and encourage your friends and family to tag along, and we will be ready with tools, gloves, and instructions for a fun day of restoration.
If you have a larger group that is interested in participating at one of our Community Work Party or looking for a private restoration opportunity, please reach out! I am happy to answer any questions you may have about the upcoming season and the work we are doing to keep our community safely engaged in salmon recovery. Please contact Sarah Brown at sbrown@n-sea.org or call 360-312-3235.
We look forward to seeing you at the creek!
Registration for Community Work Parties is now available on our website.