Native Plant Sale

With this post I’d like to highlight several of my favorite plants available in our annual native plant sale here at the Cascadia Conservation District. Quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides), mock orange (Philadelphus lewisii) and serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia) are but three of our 14 plants for sale this year. For a complete list, to make an order or to get more information please visit our website.

Quaking aspen is a deciduous tree characterized by its trembling, nearly heart shaped leaves. The effects of the slightest breeze on an Aspen grove in the fall is spectacular. Quaking aspen have smooth white bark, grow up to 80 feet and have green, chartreuse or yellow leaves depending on the time of year.  

Quaking aspen are unique in that an entire colony shares a single root structure, and each tree is genetically identical to the next within the colony. Quaking aspen can grow in most soil types, but does best in soil that is moist most of the year. It’s useful along rivers and streams as a bank stabilizer, provides nesting places for many local bird species and its foliage is browsed upon by mammals.

 Mock Orange

Mock orange is a lovely little shrub in the late spring when it dawns fragrant, showy white flowers. It grows 6 to 12 feet tall, but typically doesn’t exceed 6 feet east of the Cascades. It grows in abundance in a variety of habitats including riparian zones along gullies and streams, forested bottomlands as well as upland sites. Mock orange acts as soil stabilizer and food for many insects like moths and butterflies.

Serviceberry

If you’re looking for a shrub with attractive fall foliage, look no further than serviceberry. Serviceberry is ubiquitous throughout the western United States and Canada. It even has a town in Saskatchewan named after it (Saskatoon). Like mock orange, it dawns showy white flowers in the spring. It grows in a variety of climates and habitats either as a small deciduous tree or upright shrub. Spreading via underground runners, serviceberry often grows in large thickets. It can grow in full sun or shade and on steep or level terrain. In terms of conservation, serviceberry is used for soil stabilization and enhancing wildlife habitat (food for birds, rodents and bears).

Today’s snowpack as a percent of average is 73%.  

Warm Winter Blues

Speaking with friends and fellow AmeriCorps members, many people seem to enjoy the mild, rainy weather we’ve been having in Wenatchee. It also seems that many of my friends and co-workers are out-of-towners, flatlanders who are new to an area that relies so heavily on a healthy dose of snow in the winter. Frosty car windows, poor driving conditions, freezing pipes, tailbone-bruising slips and falls and fender benders are all valid reasons to dislike typical winter weather. However, for me the benefits of a cold, snowy winter are worth any number of those pirouetting, painful falls on the buttocks. As unpleasant as it may be at times, cold weather and snow play an important role in many of the things we enjoy and may even take for granted.

Winter sports obviously require a certain amount of snow and cold. If you’re into snowshoeing, skiing, snowboarding or any other winter sports you know how difficult winters like this can be. With only one trail available at Mission Ridge and 8 of 49 trials open at Steven’s Pass, who had a “soft opening” on Dec. 20, I’m surely not the only skier/snowboarder jonesing for a big dump (of snow).  Worse yet, if you’re a professional in such an industry you’re probably thinking of ways to mitigate the loss of revenues associated with a lack of snow. How many lessons are ski instructors giving with such warm, rainy weather and only one trail to attract skiers to Mission Ridge? How many tickets do you think Mission Ridge must sell to pay for diesel for groomers and electricity for chairlifts for a day? How many skis, poles, boots, bindings, jackets, helmets, snowboards, goggles, gloves, wax and other merchandise do local sporting goods stores sell during warm, drizzly winters? Hotels around Wenatchee and Leavenworth also take a hit when ski resorts fail to attract out-of-town skiers and boarders. Winter sports may not be for everyone, but when it comes to the local economy around here, no one can deny their value.

For those of you who hate winter weather and are less prone to winter recreation, there are other reasons to appreciate a snowy winter. After a warm winter without much snow, we are left with a measly snowpack. A poor snowpack means poor spring and summer runoff, the consequences of which include but are not limited to increased wildfire risk and severity, spending on firefighting and poor air quality. As of December 22, this year’s snowpack is 69% of average for this time of year in our area (ftp://ftp.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/data/water/wcs/gis/maps/wa_swepctnormal_update.pdf). That means we only have 69% of what the average snowpack has been on December 22 for the last 33 years. 69% of the average snowpack does not bode well for us in 2015, especially for those still reeling from the historic fire season we saw this year.

If you’re more into summer recreation, don’t be fooled. Warm winters effect summer recreation too.
Whitewater aficionados are surely watching the snowpack hoping winter brings enough snow to ensure water levels in their favorite rivers and streams are adequate through the summer season. Likewise, fisherman know that steady snow melt through the spring and summer is vital to small stream fisheries. The effects of a warm winter on our local economy are apparent in summer as well as winter. If the Wenatchee River is only runnable from April to July, local rafting outfitters lose out on an entire month of business. For businesses that are seasonal, or get an inordinate amount of business during a certain season, the snowpack can make or break an entire year.

If this post has you convinced that winter weather really isn’t so bad, do us all a favor and do a little snow dance at this very instant. Shake your rump and hope for a dump (of snow)! With this blog, for the remainder of winter, I’ll report on the current snowpack and we’ll know the collective effect of our snow dances. If you were reading in hopes of more information on Cascadia Conservation District’s native plant sale, don’t worry, next week we’ll look at quaking aspen, mock orange and serviceberry. If you can’t wait until next week, check out our website.

2015 Native Plant Sale

The Cascadia Conservation District’s 2015 native plant sale is underway! Using native plants when landscaping can be quite aesthetically pleasing, attract wildlife and is low maintenance. Because the plants we sell have evolved in this area, our climate suites them well and the local fauna depends on them. We have 14 species for sale this year and I’d like to use this post to highlight a few. If you’d like to browse our entire selection, make an order or find more information please visit our website.

Western White Pine (Pinus monticola)

This is the first time we've offered the western white pine (Pinus monticola). It is a conifer that is characterized by its open, narrow crown with up-raised, or vertical, branches near the top and horizontal branches lower down. The lower half of the bole is free of limbs. Western white pines do well in a wide range of soils and elevations. It is categorized as moderate in shade tolerance and can be an early seral species after fire or logging.    

The western white pine has an interesting history. Historically it was a prevalent species in Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon and was important in the timber industry. In Idaho today, a combination of factors have reduced it to about 7 percent of its historical norm. The most damaging of those factors is blister rust, which is a disease that can kill swathes of trees at a time. Over time, some western white pines showed more resistance to the disease than others and were selected as breeding stock. All western white pines sold in our plant sale are grown from blister rust resistant seed.

Red stem ceanothus (Populous sanguineus)

Red stem ceanothus (Populous sanguineus) is another plant we didn't offer last year. This shrub grows 3-6 feet tall and about 6 feet wide. The new growth has attractive red bark and produces masses of sweetly scented white flowers. Red stem ceanothus is well suited for our area as it does well with abundant sun exposure and dry, open sites.  If you’re looking to increase winter food sources for animals, the red stem ceanothus is worth considering. Its seeds, which persist through winter, provide an excellent food source for over-wintering birds and deer like the leaves and stems.      

      

Kinnikinnick (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi) is a groundcover native to both coasts of North America. It is an evergreen with white to pinkish, urn shaped flowers and leaves that turn reddish purple in the winter. Its bright red berries persist through fall and winter and will attract birds. Kinnikinnick does quite well in our region, and is often found growing in dense clusters. It will grow just about anywhere, but is especially well suited to dry areas with plenty of sun exposure. Low maintenance, attractive to birds and drought tolerant, this is sure to be one of this year’s most popular species.

Kinnikinnick (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi)

Our complete list of available plants can be found on our website. Stay tuned- next time we'll take a look at quaking aspen, mock orange and serviceberry.

AmeriCorps in Pateros

On Saturday October 25^th, every healthy and able AmeriCorps member in the country took part in a required day of service called Make a Difference Day. This is a day when AmeriCorps volunteers, regardless of their volunteer site, join a team of fellow AmeriCorps members in “getting things done” within the community. That could mean painting over graffiti, framing a house after a fire, or in our case rebuilding deer fences on orchards that were destroyed in the massive Carlton Complex Fire in Pateros.

Many of us will remember the 2014 fires. It affected all of us in one way or another. We heard story after heart-wrenching story about families who lost everything, who should get the blame for such a catastrophe and the sheer economic cost of such a disaster. But now, in late October, how many of us are still thinking about these issues? How many of us can honestly say that we think of the fires daily, much less deal with their consequences every day? The fires are out. The media has long since shifted their focus. Air quality is back to normal. For most, it’s back to life as usual. Not for those who live in Pateros and areas affected by the fires. I will not make any futile attempt at describing their current situation; suffice it to say, deer fences are but a fingernail scratch on the tip of the iceberg.

Deer fences are as important to an orchardist as a sharp saw to a lumberjack. Without them deer would greatly reduce yields every year, making a deer fence an excellent one time investment of time and money. The orchards we were helping out on Saturday lost significant portions of their fences, yet luckily their trees were still standing. With frozen ground and snow just around the corner, the time for repairing and in some places replacing fencing is dwindling. That’s where 34 AmeriCorps volunteers come in. By splitting our group in two we were able to help two orchards pull down damaged fencing, remove debris, trim obstructing brush, dig fence post holes and set fence posts.

At the end of the day every member of our group was dirty and tired. We left the orchards with blistered hands, tired backs and humbled egos. There were 34 of us, mostly young and able volunteers who spent a day helping out two orchards repair several hundred yards of fencing. In an area 4 times the size of Seattle. Whose primary industry is agriculture. The amount of physical and emotional repair needed in this area is ineffable. That said, and at the risk of sounding tacky, I feel comfortable speaking for the group when I say we made a difference on Make a Difference Day.

Is your compost going into Torpor?

With the mild fall weather we’re experiencing it’s likely that winter will sneak up on us. Too often I've found myself unprepared for all that winter brings. But not this year. This year will be different. I will replace my windshield wipers before it snows, I will pull out all the dead leaves from the gutters and I will coil and stow my hoses. Another cold weather preparation I've been considering is that of ‘winterizing’ my compost pile.

This is the first compost I've truly been in charge of. I built it out of free pallets, found just the right spot for it in the back yard and convinced my suspicious roommates that it was a good idea to pile food scraps in a pallet box in our yard. I’m more emotionally invested in this thing than is probably healthy.

So with the cold coming on, albeit slowly, I've been looking for ways to keep the decomposition going strong. There is no denying the cold weather its victims, but I’m hoping the tiny little organisms in my backyard pile won’t go entirely into torpor.

The easiest thing we can do to protect bacteria in our compost during winter cold is to make the heap bigger. Literally, all you have to do is add more stuff for the bacteria to eat. A larger pile will stay warmer than a smaller pile. Simple as that. To do this I've raked every leaf from my yard and at the risk of sounding like a crazy person I’m going to ask my neighbors if they have plans for their leaves and grass clippings. Luckily my compost is already a bit heavy on the nitrogen and light on the carbon, so leaves will give me a better ratio. You should consider nitrogen and carbon balances before going wild with the notion of bulking up your pile for winter.

Another easy method for keeping your bacteria warm and hungry during the winter is adding a lid. While some of you may have purchased your composter with a lid or crafted one yourself, many compost piles are just that, piles. If you have one of these more open style, heap composts, it may behoove you to throw a tarp over your pile or better yet block it in and add a lid. This will hold the heat in and keep the frost off.

My final suggestion is a good idea regardless of the season. Shredding your material into particles less than two inches in size can make decomposition easier and will allow your pile to build up evenly. It will also make your pile denser and thus better insulated.

If this post has stirred your curiosity about composting or if it’s something you've been considering, I encourage you to build your own. For me it was an activity ripe with intrinsic reward and fostered a compulsion to throw as little as possible into the trash bin.  If you need some inspiration, there are countless do-it-yourself designs to be found on the web.

This year Washingtonians saw the worst fire season in some time. The Carlton Complex burned its way into our psyche as the largest fire in state history, burning over 256,000 acres and destroying about 300 homes. Governor Jay Inslee declared a state of emergency. Washington fires were frequently feature stories in national news. Needless to say, we are all anxious for the end of fire season.   

It may be common place for the residents of North Central Washington, but as an outsider it’s been strange to see more smoky days than clear skies in September. A question for all the long time locals-do you remember seeing so many smoky days five years ago? 10 years ago? 20 years ago? Likely your answer is “no, No, NO!”

It’s no secret that in the Pacific Northwest we've seen a significant increase in the size and severity of wild fires in the last decade. Contributing factors to the uptick include forest management techniques, the growing population and increased development in wildland areas. Another undeniable contributor, climate change, is no longer something the greater scientific world is divided on. So I won’t spend any time highlighting facts to prove it. Instead, let’s consider what climate change means for the fire seasons to come.

It’s easy to say warmer weather results in higher fire danger and be done with it. But after digging a little deeper a layman, like myself, will find that there’s much more to climate change than just hotter, drier conditions. In every article I read on the subject, one common theme is longer fire seasons. With an earlier than average snow melt and warmer temperatures later in the fall, forests are at risk much longer than in the past. 50 years ago the snowpack in the Pacific Northwest melted about four weeks later than in recent years. With a shorter, less sustained melt off, forests have a relatively small window of sufficient moisture.

Mountain Pine Beetle

A lesser known yet equally exasperating effect climate change has on the fire season is the increase in fuel. Dead trees make the best fuel source for large scale wild fires. Tree killing insects like the pine

beetle have a high survival rate during mild winters, and drier conditions allow for widespread insect infestations. Ipso facto, climate change has allowed tree munching insects to turn swaths of forest into giant tinder boxes.

Even lesser known is the effect of increased risk of lightning. Not surprisingly, lightning is the cause of tens of thousands of fires each year. The likelihood of lightning increases as the temperature rises. According to the National Wildlife Federation’s website, for every 1.8 degree Fahrenheit increase lightning strikes are 6% more likely. So if our current warming trends continue, we will see an increase in lightning and lightning caused fires.

As there is no way to stomp the brakes on the climate change bus, we’re going to have to learn to live with its worsening effects. However, considering the difficulty in predicting climate change in the future, wise resource management is much easier to say than do. There is so much that we don’t understand about climate change that it can be hard to distinguish between right and wrong practices.

As tough as it may be to predict the future, one of the best  resources on climate change effects attempts to do just that. The NWCC, or Northwest Interagency Coordination Center website (if the name befuddles you as it did me, follow the link and read up!) has a plethora of reports, predictive data and helpful links. Those looking for more information, or those who are skeptical about information obtained from a layperson’s blog, may find this website handy. Particularly interesting to me was the seasonal outlook video.

The NWCC late summer and fall climate and significant fire outlook video offers information rich graphics with helpful narration.

The New Guy

Hello all, my name is Zach Hinman and I’m the new AmeriCorps member here at the Cascadia Conservation District. Those who came before me and have posted wonderful blogs since 2011 all introduced themselves with their very first post. Carrying on tradition, I’d like to share a bit about myself. I’d also like to give you an idea of my role within the Cascadia Conservation District this year.

I graduated from the University of Idaho in 2010 and have since held a variety of positions from teacher, to river guide to blueberry picker. When I’m not fulfilling the duties of any given title, I’m often on, in or near rivers. I’m a white water enthusiast, avid fly fisherman and a lackadaisical hiker and biker. I grew up not too far from here in Bend, OR. While it’s easy to appreciate the similarities between my hometown and Wenatchee, I’m looking forward to discovering the unique features the valley has to offer.

My position here at Cascadia is not dissimilar from the position I held last year as environmental educator at the Franklin Conservation District in Pasco, WA. Like last year, for the first several months of my stint here I’ll spend the majority of my time teaching Water on Wheels in elementary school classrooms. Water on Wheels is a hands on science program focusing on the importance of watersheds, soil and water.  In 2015 my duties here will change. I’m looking forward to this part of my service term where I’ll begin assisting the conservation district with their annual projects.

I’m excited about my new position here in Wenatchee and I look forward to exploring North Central Washington. I’ll do my best to keep you all posted on conservation district news and events in an exciting and relevant way. I encourage everyone to leave questions, comments and concerns.

As a final thought I’d like to remind everyone of the forthcoming due date for our Picture the Wenatchee photo contest. Those excellent photos you've all been taking in the Wenatchee River Watershed this year can be submitted from now until October 1^st. 12 winning photos will be used in our 2015 calendar. You can find details and make submissions at picturethewenatchee.com.

P.S. The Wenatchee River Salmon Festival will take place this weekend, September 18-20^th, at the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery. There will be art, food, games and more. Find our booth for an interactive watershed model!

-Zach

Goodbye, Cascadia

Well, it’s arrived. The end of my service term here at the Cascadia Conservation District. Come July 15 I will have served 10.5 months and over 1700 hours with the district. It’s been an interesting journey. Many things I enjoyed doing, some I didn't. There were really busy times, and slower ones. The one thing that held it all together even when I wasn't necessarily enjoying myself were the people. I enjoyed working with everyone here. It’s one of the few places I've worked or spent time at that I felt completely included. It’s refreshing to realize that not all workplaces are uptight and stuffy. I actually look forward to showing up to work, which is a first.

So with that I must admit I am a little sad to leave. The District has given me opportunities to work with a variety of conservation related activities. Time spent in the field digging holes and watering plants. Coordinating native plant sales and workshops to help county residents better manage and support their natural resources. I taught students from kindergarten up through high school about a wide variety of environmental subjects, from the shrub steppe to rivers to fish. I felt like I contributed and had an impact. For that I am thankful. I've learned a lot in the last year and I’m happy that I finally got to put some of my knowledge to good use.

I hope that after this I can continue to find places to contribute and make an impact. I don’t have anything lined up yet, but I’m not worried about that. It’ll come to me eventually. Maybe I’ll look for more permanent employment in the conservation field. Maybe I’ll go back to school. Only time will tell.

So I bid farewell. I've quite enjoyed writing these blogs. Some of them might have been a little dense, but overall I’m hoping they were all still interesting. And most important of all, I'm hopeful you learned something. 

Dry Spring

Summer is nearly upon us. And for the first time in a few years I feel like the weather has progressed in an appropriate fashion, slowly transitioning out of winter, warming up in early spring, some hot days in May, but generally a constant increase in temperature without a lot of fluctuation. The hills were spring green, the flowers bloomed, and now as we move into summer they’re taking on their more traditional ‘golden’ color.  I consider it an almost perfect spring.

Perfect except for the lack of moisture. It’s looking to be a dry summer. Three small blazes have already occurred in and around the area. One from lightning, one from a campfire, and the most recent may be linked to fireworks. While two of those were easily preventable (i.e. don’t play with fire outside in the summer), it still bodes poorly for this summer’s fire season.

It’s been a dry spring. That’s not to say there is or will be a lack of water. Last I looked the river was flowing along just fine, full of cold and (somewhat) clear water. Water still flows from our taps and our lawns are just as green as ever. The snowpack near the end of winter was just about where it needed to be to ensure proper water flows down the rivers and through our pipes.

The lack of spring moisture will be felt more in the hills and forests. Areas we can’t just turn on the sprinkler and let the water flow upon the parched land. And guess what? The native plants don’t care. There’s a reason they’re native. They survive and thrive in this climate. Going for a few months without water from the sky is natural.

Some of them survive by doing all their growing and flowering in the spring when there’s water available from snowmelt. At this point annuals usually die off leaving behind their seeds to sprout up the following spring. Some perennials die back and wait out the summer, fall, and winter, sprouting with new growth when spring comes again. Other plants survive and grow throughout the year by sinking roots deep into the soil to get at the water that never quite evaporates.

The problem is invasive plants thrive in this climate as well. They’re invasive because they can outcompete native plants. Whether by taking over areas native plants don’t usually grow, colonizing a disturbed area quicker, or some combination of these and other reasons.

Wildfires are a natural part of the ecosystem. And in a healthy ecosystem they generally burn quickly through an area and move on. The problem we have is the amount of material present creates dangerous fire conditions. Invasive plants grow around natives filling in what may have been a ‘natural’ fire break. Lack of fire over several years allows native plants to grow bigger and spread over a larger area than they have historically. All this leads to bigger and bigger fires.

Which can be counteracted by higher levels of moisture. It’s hard for fires to burn through green grass or damp soil. If there had been more spring rain the three small fires this year might not have occurred. Rain can counteract an unhealthy aspect of an ecosystem. The thing is we can’t count on the rain. Our area is dry and prone to fires. Hoping for moisture won’t change that.

Many wildfires can be prevented through safe outdoor activities: no campfires, no sparks, etc. But the lightning strike that started the first wildfire this year is not something we can control. Lightning is a natural process and was the original igniter for the natural wildfire cycle of our area. Putting it out was probably the correct thing to do. Wildfires have been suppressed long enough that to let them burn unchecked will lead to massive ecological and property damage. But we’ve also reached the point that any wildfires that do start will take on a life of their own and provide a real challenge to control and stop.

Funny how a lack of falling water from the sky can have such an impact on our area. We’ll probably be fine. Most people are safe when they’re outdoors in the middle of the summer with the fire danger. And hopefully it doesn’t turn into a smoky, miserable summer.

May Wrap Up

May is drawing to a close and I realize that this is the first (and only) blog post for the month. It’s been a busy month with most weeks full of a variety of activities that demanded my attention and kept me out of the office. However, I didn't want to end the month without highlighting a few of the things that occurred, so here they are.

 Several weeks in April and May saw me helping with science field days around Wenatchee. First was a 5^th grade shrub steppe experience, next a similar experience for 1^st graders, after that a kindergarten walk, and finally at the end of the month a 4^th grade science day revolving around fish and hydroelectric power. That seems like a lot, but for the most part I really enjoyed all of it. I helped with plant identification and counting, native wildlife, ecosystems, and fish statistics. It was good that I had a presence there, both as an Americorps member and as a representative of Cascadia. Cascadia has an effect, both directly and indirectly, on many of these ecosystems through their work in conservation and restoration. It’s helpful to be able to introduce the kids to the ideas of natural ecosystems and the organizations that are involved with preserving them.

May’s next event was Kids in the Creek (KITC). KITC is a program put on by Cascadia in partnership with the US Fish & Wildlife Service and the Forest Service, along with many others. The program is designed to get young high school students hands on science through a variety of stations. Half of the stations are ‘dry’ and include: water quality, fish health, and riparian vegetation. The other half are ‘wet’ stations. Requiring the students to don waders and get in the creek (hence the Kids in the Creek). These stations include: invertebrate investigation, stream health, and flow. KITC occurred in early May and brought roughly 300 students through the 3 day program. The overall goal is to connect the classroom science with real-life experiences, showing students that science is not just boring class time.

The third week of May I was out of the office driving halfway across the county to Minnesota to canoe for a week, and then driving back to Washington. I mention this because of some of my observations along the way. In many locations on my drive I noticed fields tilled right up to the water lines on creeks, rivers, and lakes. There was no buffer. Anything applied to the crops could run into the water. Erosion was rampant in spots with 10 foot vertical banks slowly eating into fields because there was no riparian vegetation to secure the soil. It was obvious the natural ecosystem had been destroyed in many areas leaving only countless fields behind.

That’s about it for the month of May. Everything that occurred managed to shrink to a manageable text level, but only because I don’t want to get into all the details. I spent much of my time at education and outreach events, which is great because that’s what I’m here for. I feel like several hundred students learned a little more about the environment through my actions.