It’s been more than a year since the last volunteer work day in a Bainbridge Island park. The pandemic frustrated stewardship efforts, with two Earth Days, an MLK Day of Service and a dozen trail work parties lost.
One thing COVID didn’t slow: noxious weeds. Ivy, holly, blackberry and other nuisance plants kept right on crawling across the landscape.
Fortunately, we still had Earth Corps. Work crews from the Seattle-based nonprofit will soon complete their fourth full week in Bainbridge parks since November, keeping invasive plants in check even as the island’s volunteer stewards have been sidelined.
An Earth Corps team led by Ethan East has been grubbing out vines and Scotch broom along the loop trail at Blakely Harbor Park, picking up where he and another team left off last fall.
“It’s especially good coming back and seeing, ‘Wow, the work we did stuck,’” East says. “The first chunk of the sweep where we were working looks really good still. It’s really affirming.”
The nine-day work session moves next to the Blakely Hill Trails for trail construction and maintenance there.
The work is contracted by Bainbridge Metro Parks, and funded by the Bainbridge Island Parks Foundation through general donations.
Earth Corps crews were idled for two months early in the pandemic, but soon returned to the field following masks-and-distancing protocols.
“Earth Corps has been a big part of Bainbridge park stewardship this past year, maybe the biggest,” says Barb Trafton, Parks Foundation project director. “They were out there when our volunteers couldn’t be.”
Seattle-based Earth Corps was founded in 1993 as Cascadia Quest – a “Peace Corps for the Earth” – offering service learning with an environmental bent. Their motto: “Local Restoration, Global Leadership.”
Modeled on the Civilian Conservation Corps of the New Deal era, the nonprofit organization puts young adults into paid public service, stewarding and restoring lands around the Puget Sound region. Typical projects involve invasive weed removal, native plant installation, stream and salmon habitat protection, and slope stabilization and runoff control.
Workers come from across the country and internationally to serve 10-month terms. More than 1,000 young environmentalists have gone through the program to date.
Tacoma native Kasey Shultz, crew leader during a recent Earth Corps stint at Moritani Preserve, was drawn to the program for her love of the Pacific Northwest and its environment.
“I was looking for opportunities that would allow me to be outside and in relationship with the land,” Shultz says. “I saw the job posting for Earth Corps crew members, and it sounded like a great program that would feed my passion for the outdoors, and that would provide me with a lot of learning and skills that could open up other opportunities in the future.”
Shultz’s team tackled a swath of troublesome ivy at Moritani Preserve’s west edge, but had spring replanting projects behind them and on the horizon. They were part of a weeks-long restoration project near Sedro-Woolley, where several Earth Corps teams spent weeks putting in more than 5,500 native plants near the Skagit River.
East and his team were most recently deployed to West Seattle’s Delridge neighborhood, maintaining community rain gardens along residential streets. The planting strips provide stormwater control and filter roadway pollutants.
Ask team members what’s the best thing about serving with Earth Corps, and the answers follow certain themes:
“Being outside.”
“Doing service for the environment and the community.”
“Being able to travel around and see beautiful places with people who have a shared passion for the environment.”
“The company of my crew, and being outside.”
“The camping trips.”
That last is a summertime perk of the program. In cold November, East and crew were billeted at Prue’s House cabin at Hilltop in the Grand Forest, not a bad stay in itself.
This week, under very blue skies, they’re camping at Fay Bainbridge Park.
There’s also the reward of seeing host communities turn out and applaud Earth Corps’ hard work. East and crew plan to Zoom in to the grand re-opening ceremony of a Skagit County park they helped replant just last month.
“It’s always good to go back to projects and see what they look like now,” East says. “Very cool.”
