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The City of Poulsbo’s newest park, a 13-acre piece of property at 228 NW Lindvig Way along the Dogfish Creek estuary, is beginning to take shape. Plans for the site include habitat restoration, a nature park with trails, viewing platforms and interpretive signage.
On Saturday June 24, the Poulsbo North Kitsap Rotary Club began work on the first of four planned viewing decks that will provide visitors with a place to enjoy the sights, photograph birds and wildlife, and just sit along the expanding Dogfish Creek & Liberty Bay estuary.
Meanwhile, 150 young people from the Latter Day Saints (LDS) Poulsbo, Bainbridge Island, and Bremerton wards, descended on the park’s uplands to beat back the tenacious Himalayan blackberry fields. Earlier this year, eighty members of the North Kitsap Baptist Church and thirty Christ Memorial Church members formed work parties to remove weeds and lay trails.
“They just do tremendous work and the LDS have picked this up as a service project so we’re expecting a lot of blackberry to be eradicated this summer. We will then cover those areas with cardboard and a thick layer of mulch,” said Joan Hett, Volunteer Coordinator for the City.
“We have planted over 200 plants donated by the Liberty Bay Foundation from their EPA, Ecology and Salmon Recovery Funding Board grant projects. I plan to design some coastal plant communities and start more of the overstory plants, then work in understory groundcovers as these become established.”
Hett, an Ecologist, retired from Seattle City Light where she headed the Vegetation Management Unit and began as a volunteer member of the Poulsbo Tree Board in 2002.
In 2003, she was asked to join the Fish Park Steering Committee where she was joined by fellow Tree Board member and Audubon Society representative Ernie Linger, Poulsbo North Kitsap Rotary member Leo Fried, Poulsbo Noon Lions member Karl Osteller, Suquamish Tribe Fisheries Salmon Recovery Coordinator Paul Dorn, Chair Tom Nordlie (former Marine Science Society Board), Liberty Bay Foundation’s President (Barrantes), WSU Master Gardener Pig Tillery, and community member Andrew Torres, manager of Poulsbo’s Viking Bank. The committee has since whittled down some while others have joined the effort.
Leo Fried, owner of Blue Heron Jewelry in downtown Poulsbo, has led several work parties and put in considerable hours as both a member of the steering committee and Rotarian.
Work parties gather the third Sunday of the month from 1-4 p.m. Volunteers — young and old — are only asked to dress for the weather and bring their favorite gardening tools and gloves.
Dorn has designed some built ponds while working on salmon enhancement and habitat projects with volunteers, Suquamish Tribal members and staff. The Tribe has partnered with several groups on enhancement projects in Liberty Bay, Dogfish Creek fish passages including the culvert removal and Lindvig Bridge replacement, Trout Unlimited salmon rearing, Kitsap Conservation District projects with local property owners, as well as ongoing benthic and water quality monitoring with the Kitsap County Stream Team and fish counts in the Creek.
The purchase of the park and initial design & development phases have been funded through grants from the IAC, Salmon Recovery Funding Board, and Department of Natural Resources Aquatic Lands Enhancement Account (ALEA) while most of the labor has come from volunteers.
The future phases planned for the site are to add over two miles of trails connecting under the bridge to Nelson Park and build a “Nature Center” for terrestrial, fresh water, environmental and biological education with a focus on salmon. Construction of the third and fourth viewing stations will be led by an Eagle Scout project and the Poulsbo Noon Lions Club.
Tom Nordlie, former resident of Colorado and property developer, chairs the steering committee and originally conceived the idea of a nature center when he met Dorn and others involved with the City’s park development.
“My daughter worked as an Americorps volunteer at the Morrison-Knudsen Nature Preserve in Boise Idaho. When I became involved with the Marine Science Center and Fish Park Steering Committee, I thought there was a potential to be something associated with the center,” said Nordlie, “though now efforts here have taken on a life of their own.”
“If we’d have waited for the government we’d still be looking at how to buy the property and admiring our drawings!” remarked Linger.
It serves as a remarkable model of how volunteer work, community activism, and local government collaboration provides greater public benefit… at less cost. |
