Native Tree Planting with Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Agency

On Valentine’s Day, we decided to show our love by helping Mother Nature out with a stewardship trip. Western Washington University, National Park Trust, and a local stewardship organization, the Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association (NSEA) worked together to remove invasive Himalayan Blackberries, and plant native plants such as Snowberry, Yellow Cedar, and Birch trees.

We met NSEA at Julianna Park, a local park in Bellingham, and learned how to remove invasive species, create an elevated compost pile for the plants to stop them from regrowing, and plant and mulch native plants. We had 10 participants and NSEA had an additional 75 local volunteers that we worked with. Throughout the process, we ended up planting 110 plants as a group, each with a mulch ring to help keep the soil saturated.

Showing college students how to care for the world around them was a super exciting experience. The participants had never attended an NSEA partnered trip before, or even a work party in general so this was all very new. Being able to see the impact you are making on the ecosystem is something that gives you a scale for your ability to create change and make a better world; something a participant expressed. Without the National Park Trust, we wouldn’t have hosted a work party, so they inspired us at Western to run this trip and continue to run it into the future. In your community, you can be the change you want to see in your ecosystem if you get your hands dirty too.