EarthCorps

Science and research 🤝 stewardship and restoration. The best kind of collaboration!

🔬 🌿 Our EarthCorps crews, along with Northwest Youth Corps and researchers from Washington State University's Urban Forest Health Lab, recently got a deep dive into how science and stewardship work together to protect local ecosystems:

Joey Hulbert, Research Assistant Professor in WSU’s Department of Plant Pathology, opened the day with an educational tour and introduced us to the Sentinel Tree Monitoring Program with the Port of Tacoma: This project monitors trees near the Port, checking for invasive insects and plant diseases that can spread through international shipping. Programs like this require scientists and community volunteers to partner together to track tree health and identify threats early.

Afterwards we toured WSU Puyallup’s research campus to see rain gardens, stormwater systems, nurseries, and research labs, including some close-ups of plants and insects with Marianne Elliott, a Plant Pathologist at WSU. It gave us the perfect energy to take on a riparian forest site along the Puyallup River, where our crew prepared the site for future restoration.

What a fantastic day. A big thank you to everyone involved for this valuable opportunity. 👏

Magnuson Park is a little healthier today.

More than 60 volunteers from Boeing's Accelerated Leadership Programs joined us in Magnuson Park to pull invasive blackberry and care for the native habitat that makes this park feel like home for so many of our neighbors. Their hands added to the work of countless community members, partners, and crews who have been tending to this place for years.

That's what restoration looks like in our region. Neighbors, volunteers, and partners showing up — side by side — so that local habitat can recover, Puget Sound's waters can stay healthier, and this shoreline can remain a place where people and wildlife thrive together.

We're also grateful to Boeing for a $75,000 Global Engagement Grant that will help carry this work forward at the Qwuloolt estuary — one more chapter in a long-standing partnership rooted in care for this region.

To every volunteer, every community member, and every partner who showed up for the land over the years: thank you. The work is bigger than any one of us, and that's exactly the point.

Read more about the day through the link in the comments.

Last weekend, students from the University of Washington Consulting Association helped EarthCorps remove 1,045+ square feet of blackberry, reed canary grass, and knapweed. 🤯 🙌 Volunteers win the day! 👏

This important work at Union Slough Park in Snohomish County creates space for native plants to return to this ecosystem. In just a few short years, this site has already begun welcoming wildlife back and, with continued care, will play an important role as salmon habitat for years to come.

Thank you to our partners at Port of Everett for collaborating with us on this restoration work, to Jack Lockhart at the UW for your leadership and supporting this effort, and to Jasnoor, a volunteer that went above and beyond to protect young trees in a sea of reed canary grass. This is what community-powered restoration looks like. 💪🌎

Our crews love to make unexpected friends at project sites. 🐍🌿 For our Corps Members, working to support wildlife habitats can include visits from curious "locals": squirrels, birds, snakes and more.

While helping improve water flow and support restoration near Brightwater Treatment plant, our crew spotted a few garter snakes making themselves at home. These small but important predators are a great sign of a functioning ecosystem, helping keep insect and rodent populations in balance.

Every project is a chance to support habitat, not just for plants, but also for the wildlife that depend on it.