Environment Archives | Page 2 of 4 | Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation

Madeline Ostrander brings climate change home

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 homeDouglas2023-03-10T15:27:56-08:00

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

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 corridorDouglas2023-06-13T16:55:55-07:00

Moritani Preserve a model for conservation, restoration

Moritani Preserve a model for conservation, restoration

For a forester, a walk in the woods is never just that.

When she first stepped into Moritani Preserve, Malloree Weinheimer – atypical of her profession, perhaps, with a background in art history – could see the cascading layers of meaning that overlay the land: ancestral home to the island’s indigenous peoples; the vestiges of commercial berry production, when Japanese and Filipino farmers cleared the property and worked the soil; to over-dense stands of Douglas firs planted 50 or 60 years ago, presciently, to buffer against creeping suburbia.

And the poor health today of those same trees: hundreds of “lollipops” with skinny trunks, withered branches and mere tufts of green at the top. The trees may look pretty to the untrained eye, but the picture of forest vitality, Moritani Preserve is not. Yet.

“It’s overstocked and looks like a (tree) plantation on the north part,” […]

Moritani Preserve a model for conservation, restorationDouglas2023-03-08T18:10:44-08:00

MLK Day makes welcome return to Blakely

MLK Day makes welcome return to Blakely

About 175 volunteers made it “a day on, not a day off,” as MLK Day of Service returned to Blakely Harbor Park after a three-year Covid layoff.

Effort was concentrated around the park’s south boundary near Country Club Road. Volunteers uprooted swaths of ivy that had taken hold since the last big restoration event and replanted Northwest natives.

“It needs a lot of love,” Lydia Roush, Natural Resources Manager for Bainbridge Metro Parks, said of the park’s southwest quadrant. “It’s the same methodology that continues to ring true. You pull ‘em out, you come back and monitor and continue to pull, and eventually they’re eradicated.

“We fill in with as much native vegetation as we can to help shade out and keep invasives from taking hold. Volunteers are really critical in helping us achieve our goals.”

Northwest natives introduced included yarrow (Achillea […]

MLK Day makes welcome return to BlakelyDouglas2023-02-01T09:25:00-08:00

City staff, BI Rowing team up for Waterfront Park restoration

City staff, BI Rowing team up for Waterfront Park restoration

Thanks to staffers from Bainbridge Island City Hall for giving their time at a Waterfront Park environmental restoration event last week.

COBI staffers volunteered under their Wellness program alongside volunteers from Bainbridge Island Rowing. The group planted new Western red cedars, sword ferns and native strawberry along the sidewalk at the park’s east end.

It was the second in a series of Waterfront Park restoration events co-sponsored by the City and the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation.

The ongoing project targets an area of the park blighted by invasive ivy and holly. An April event saw City staffers and other volunteers clear trees of vines, uproot invasive groundcover, and grub out several truckloads of holly and blackberry.

The native replanting fulfills new requirements for restoration in shoreline zones. New plants were funded by the City.

The restoration area is bounded to the […]

City staff, BI Rowing team up for Waterfront Park restorationDouglas2022-12-16T11:07:48-08:00

Century-old oak comes into the light at Moritani Preserve

Century-old oak comes into the light at Moritani Preserve

Moritani Preserve’s newest natural wonder isn’t so new – 100 years by some estimates, and that’s probably on the low end. Stately, leafy, sprawling across the open blue sky, yet always hidden just beyond plain sight.

You can call it Garry. Maybe.

“Look at this oak, isn’t it magnificent?” muses Lydia Roush, natural resource manager for Bainbridge Metro Parks. “It’s much more aesthetic to walk through here and see this huge, majestic and very old oak. The horse chestnuts were growing into it and shading it out. We’re hoping now that it’s got more sun and more space, it’ll perk back up and shoot out some new limbs in the spring.”

The century-old oak came to light this past week as the Park District felled a clump of giant chestnut trees that had through the years grown up in front but found themselves on the […]

Century-old oak comes into the light at Moritani PreserveDouglas2022-10-25T11:28:03-07:00

Restoring a forest at Strawberry Hill

Restoring a forest at Strawberry Hill

Trees this tall shouldn’t be this thin.

Bundled like pencils they stand, ring upon ring of bare, withered branches scaling their skinny trunks toward tiny puffs of green canopy aloft. In a Pacific Northwest defined by majestic forests of Douglas fir, the trees on the new Strawberry Hill Park addition have never quite made the grade. Now the challenge is helping the best ones move forward.

“It should not be this heavily stocked for this size of tree,” says Lydia Roush, natural resources manager for Bainbridge Metro Parks, scanning the rolling stands of troubled firs along park’s west edge. “It’s kind of a miracle more trees haven’t come down, or they’re not in even worse shape.”

The 10-acre parcel reflects the shifting uses of the island landscape, its natural and cultural history. Ancient forests were cleared for timber and, here, agriculture. Several generations of berry […]

Restoring a forest at Strawberry HillDouglas2022-11-23T11:57:39-08:00

Bainbridge Beach Cleanup is Sept. 10

Bainbridge Beach Cleanup is Sept. 10

Seeking volunteers to help with the annual Bainbridge Island Beach Cleanup on Saturday, Sept. 10, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.! This annual stewardship event is held in collaboration with Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup .

Sustainable Bainbridge, in partnership with many other Bainbridge Island nonprofits, is organizing this event to help clean our 53 miles of shoreline. We can all make a difference for our environment and our wildlife!

Everyone can get involved, whether it is supporting a team by entering data in the Ocean Conservancy CleanSwell app or picking up garbage along our shores and waterways–and even along our roadsides.

Sign up at https://www.sustainablebainbridge.org/event/beach-cleanup/

Take pictures and share your unusual debris and finds with us! Use the hashtag #bibeachcleanup when posting on […]

Bainbridge Beach Cleanup is Sept. 10Douglas2022-08-19T21:08:28-07:00

Leafline Trails Coalition launches 900-mile trail vision

Leafline Trails Coalition launches 900-mile trail vision

Gov. Jay Inslee pedaled the Sound to Olympics Trail on Bainbridge Island, as Leafline Trails Coalition today launched a visionary network with more than 900 miles of trails to safely and efficiently connect communities throughout the central Puget Sound region.

“Nobody’s ever caught frowning on a trail,” Inslee said as he live-streamed his ride up the STO from Winslow Way to High School Road, via a handlebar-mounted camera. “Everybody’s happy, ever notice that? People on trails are always smiling.”

Inslee live-streamed brief comments from the STO trailhead, hailing the regional trails plan as the most exciting mapping project since Peter Puget surveyed Puget Sound in 1792.

There are about 500 miles of trails today in King, Kitsap, Pierce, and Snohomish counties, Leafline says, but there has never before been a concerted effort to create a network that crosses jurisdictional boundaries and Puget Sound.

Currently, 56 percent of the more than 900-mile trail network is […]

Leafline Trails Coalition launches 900-mile trail visionDouglas2022-06-01T14:52:35-07:00

Trafton named Environmentalist of the Year

Trafton named Environmentalist of the Year

Congratulations to the Parks Foundation’s Barb Trafton, Bainbridge Island Environmentalist of the Year! The award was announced at the annual Bainbridge Environmental Conference in March.

Barb has been a leader for parks and trails on Bainbridge Island since the 1990s, when she joined the successful effort to save land around Blakely Harbor from development that led to the creation of Blakely Harbor Park.

She was co-chair of the Pritchard Park design committee when that park was created beginning in 2004. While serving with the Bainbridge Island Land Trust, she ran the campaign to add the first “Olson Addition” to the Ted Olson Preserve. She was the co-chair of the first successful levy lid lift for the Bainbridge Island Metro Park & Recreation District in 2008, and founded the Student Conservation Corps youth park stewardship program.

Barb served as the Bainbridge Island’s Parks Foundation’s executive director […]

Trafton named Environmentalist of the YearDouglas2022-04-16T08:18:18-07:00