Restoring Seattle’s wildlife habitat

Posted by: Mette Hanson, Interpretive Exhibits

Saturday was a beautiful day to be in the forest, yanking ivy and mulching new native plants. As part of our Share the Habitat summer experience, the zoo has partnered with EarthCorps to connect zoo visitors with family-friendly opportunities to restore forests in our neighborhood parks. Zoo staff and volunteers joined an EarthCorps event last weekend and we were really impressed with how much could be accomplished in just four hours! Seeing the acres of ivy covering trees and blanketing hillsides in our local parks can feel pretty daunting—especially if you’ve ever tried to remove a small patch from your backyard! But with this well-organized group, the work was fun and very do-able – even for kids. (One of the maintenance areas we worked on had originally been cleared by a group of kindergarteners)!

Here are the numbers for Saturday’s event at Golden Gardens:
- 47,040 square feet of restoration site maintenance (that’s over an acre – WOW!!)
- 1,000 square feet of new ivy removal
- 444 native plants mulched

Human-powered conveyor belt:

We’re moving buckets of mulch from the main pile down the path to the plant restoration site. This mulch will help keep tender new native plants moist and free of weeds while they gain a foothold replacing the invasive ivy.

There are fun volunteer events like this happening all summer. Sign up here. No experience necessary!

This is just one small piece of the region-wide effort that is helping to restore forests in our local parks. Last Saturday’s event was sponsored by EarthCorps, Earth Share and The Green Seattle Partnership.