Day of Remembrance was one to remember

The Day of Remembrance was one to remember. 

The annual stewardship event brought more than 100 volunteers from the island, Seattle and beyond to tidy up the grounds of the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial at Pritchard Park. It marked the 82-year anniversary of federal Executive Order 9066, which on Feb. 19, 1942, authorized the wartime incarceration of citizens of Japanese ancestry. 

The stewardship event – a prelude to the March 30 Exclusion Day observance – was hosted by the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial Association, and co-sponsored by the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation and Bainbridge Island Metro Park & Recreation District. 

Ellen Sato Faust, BIJAEMA executive director, thanked all for their participation. 

“Young and old, rain or shine, volunteers play a crucial role in furthering our mission and ensuring that the stories and experience of those affected by the […]

Day of Remembrance was one to remember2024-02-23T08:39:47-08:00

Give to Moritani Preserve, in the heart of our community

To say it’s been an exciting 12 months at Moritani would be an understatement. Thanks to your help, the Preserve In the Heart of Winslow has received so much extraordinary care and – it’s Valentine’s Day, so yes, we’ll say it – love!

Your support through the Parks & Trails Foundation funded intensive, weeklong work sessions by EarthCorps and Student Conservation Corps, who concentrated on restoring the park’s east boundary. These teams worked with Bainbridge Metro Parks to revive an area that not long ago was overrun by vines and invasives, but this spring will be newly abloom. Visit the park and see!

Some 350 volunteers of all ages turned out through the year, offering 400-plus person-hours of spirited work at the Preserve. Volunteers planted 90 hardy native shrubs and trees (funded with your support), established new “habitat piles” of fallen sticks for the forest’s littlest critters, and spread many, many yards […]

Give to Moritani Preserve, in the heart of our community2024-02-14T10:59:00-08:00

Forest thinning underway at Strawberry Hill

Even a skinny tree makes quite a WHUMP when it hits the ground. 

As we are there to hear it, an age-old philosophical question remains unsettled. In any case there are the echoes, reverberating through the misty morning and across the island to herald that forest thinning at Strawberry Hill Park has, in fact, begun. 

WHUMP.

“It’s a shocking sound for such a small tree, isn’t it?,” reflects Lydia Roush, Parks Superintendent for Bainbridge Metro Parks. “But they’re so dense, and Douglas fir is heavy.” 

It’s a first-of-its-kind project on the island: restoring an overdense, profoundly unhealthy forest through aggressive thinning and strategic replanting, while at the same time carving out chute-like paths for the new bike trails that soon will criss-cross down the hillside. 

About 40 percent of the trees are coming out. In the shadow of those […]

Forest thinning underway at Strawberry Hill2024-03-05T07:51:43-08:00

Sign up for Winter Work Parties

There’s a full slate of  winter work parties in Bainbridge Island parks and trails ahead. Sign up today!

Conservation Work Party

Where: Blakley Harbor Park, NE Country Club Road

When: Saturday, Feb. 10 and March 9 (2nd Saturdays), 10:00a-12:00p

What:  Join the Park District, IslandWood, and the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation every second Saturday this winter in the ongoing restoration of Blakley Harbor Park! Thousands of volunteer hours have already been logged, helping transform the site of the former largest mill in the world. Volunteers will help remove invasive species, spread mulch to discourage regrowth, and plant native species where invasives have been controlled.

Well suited for children ages six and up who are comfortable using small hand tools and walking off trail on uneven surfaces.

REGISTER HERE


Trails Work Party

Where: Fort Ward Park (Upper Parking Lot), Fort Ward Hill Road

When: Saturday, Jan. 20, Feb. 17, March 16 (3rd Saturdays), 10:00a-12:00p

What: Join the […]

Sign up for Winter Work Parties2024-02-07T10:57:50-08:00

Find winter peace in parks and trails

We are in the approach of the shortest day of the year, Dec. 20. The winter months can feel like a long dark tunnel through which we must pass endless hours in low light and shortened days. The moistness of the air is heavy, and the mists cling and linger in the fir and cedar branches shooting skyward.

The cloud layer is soddened and gray, and the distant memory of summer flowers feel at their very farthest. It is time to harvest the gifts hidden among the shadows in the woods and within our beautiful parks and beaches.

Drip-drip-drip go the rain droplets falling from wet branches as the breeze loosens them and they fall to the ground. The thirsty soil drinks them up and laughs a cheerful splash back to the ear. Mushrooms, rotted wood dissolving in the rains, laden covered branches with gray furry lichen, fallen leaves, evergreen huckleberry, salal, […]

Find winter peace in parks and trails2024-01-25T16:17:10-08:00

Stop weeds – brush those boots before you hike

Brush your boots before you hike? It’s good policy, and good trail hygiene, catching the spread of invasive weeds and seeds before they’re tromped all over trails and parks. 

To that end, you’ll find new boot-brush stations at two island trailheads: Gazzam Lake Preserve (Deerpath Lane) and Blakely Harbor Park (3-T Road). Two more are on the way, at Grand Forest West (Miller Road) and another at Gazzam Lake (Marshall Road trailhead, this one an Eagle Scout project and also funded by a Parks & Trails Foundation grant). 

“They’re exactly like what people might on their front porch to scrape mud off their boots before they head inside,” says Morgan Houk, volunteer program manager for Bainbridge Metro Parks. “They can be used coming in and out of trail systems to catch invasive weeds – especially in the wintertime, when we tend to […]

Stop weeds – brush those boots before you hike2023-08-25T09:19:44-07:00

Eagledale volleyball court revived through ParksCorps

Not even most volleyball players seemed to know there’s a sand court at Eagledale Park. 

“My daughter’s been in volleyball for seven years, and she’s never touched this court,” admitted Megan Adcock, a Bainbridge Spartan Volleyball Boosters parent. “We had no idea.” 

There is, and now they do, after a great ParksCorps volunteer event at the south-end park. More than 30 players and parent volunteers turned out to restore the court and grounds. Besides weeding and raking the court, volunteers grubbed out about 4 cubic yards of invasives and left the park looking a lot sharper. 

Volunteers included a team Blackmouth Design, a Day Road design-build firm. Owner Rich Batcheller’s daughter Lola is a setter with the BHS varsity squad. 

“I pulled some guys off jobs today,” Batcheller said. “It’s good to get outside and get some fresh air, get away from […]

Eagledale volleyball court revived through ParksCorps2023-08-24T15:10:51-07:00

Celebrate Earth Month all month in April

April is Celebrate Trees! Earth Month Bainbridge Island 

April is Earth Month on Bainbridge Island!  Celebrating with activities and events for all ages for Earth Day and Arbor Day during the entire month of April and beyond. Everyone can take action and join activities to support, celebrate, and learn more about our environment and beautiful planet Earth.

Sustainable Bainbridge, in partnership with the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation and many other Bainbridge Island nonprofits, is hosting an incredible variety of opportunities, including weed pulls and work parties, Earth Day celebrations, nature talks, free invasive weed disposal, and nature walks.  Take action every day as an individual, a family, or a group.

Tell us about your month. Take pictures and share your Earth Month actions and projects with us. Use the hashtag #EarthMonthBI when posting on social media for Earth Month on Bainbridge Island.  Join us in celebrating with activities and events for […]

Celebrate Earth Month all month in April2023-03-22T18:06:13-07:00

Madeline Ostrander brings climate change home

If you’re feeling a little down watching the world you grew up with evanesce around you – forests burning here, glaciers melting there, our once reliably gorgeous Northwest summers now blighted by heat and smoke – there’s a word for that: solastalgia

The term describes a sense of loss or homesickness, as Madeline Ostrander has it, “from watching one’s environment unravel.” 

So, you’re not alone. The question is, how you respond.

“I think in this part of the world, where people are experiencing wildfires, there is a sense of unease about what is this place we’re living in now, and what is it becoming,” says Ostrander, science journalist and author of “At Home on an Unruly Planet: Finding Refuge on a Changed Earth” (2022). “Some people feel it in a way that is very front of mind and they can talk […]

Madeline Ostrander brings climate change home2023-03-10T15:27:56-08:00

New Puget Sound to Pacific Collaborative plans for 200-mile trail corridor

The Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation is one of three organizations in the new Puget Sound to Pacific Collaborative, bringing communities together to plan and build a 200-mile multi-use trail from the ferry docks on Bainbridge Island, Kingston and Port Townsend to the Pacific Coast at La Push.

The PS2P Collaborative also includes the North Kitsap Trails Association, and the Peninsula Trails Coalition.

The Puget Sound to Pacific (PS2P) trail network would be bookended by the Olympic Discovery Trail and the Sound to Olympics Trail, linking communities and local connecting trails along the route.

Far more than a recreational trail, PS2P would be the spine of an “active transportation” corridor and greenway that shifts short commutes away from automobiles to human-scaled and people-powered travel modes like walking and bicycling. It aligns with transportation and climate goals and policies at every level of state and local government.

“One hundred miles are already complete, after 35 years of hard work by […]

New Puget Sound to Pacific Collaborative plans for 200-mile trail corridor2023-06-13T16:55:55-07:00
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