February Marymoor Park Habitat Restoration Update
Written by Emily Kistler
Emily Kistler, Marymoor Park Habitat Restoration Steward
February’s habitat restoration work party at Marymoor Park was held on an extra muddy day with all the rain in King County. It was so muddy, that our Gator utility vehicle couldn’t use the non-paved section of trail. Eastside Audubon uses the Gator to transport mulch to and the yard waste away from the Bird Loop. Fortunately, King County had delivered several large piles of mulch earlier in the week, so we were able to keep up with the demand for mulch.
We had 45 members of the community join us in our work party volunteering 141.5 hours. Our volunteers moved 10 cubic yards of mulch and pulled 11 cubic yards of invasive plants.
Our volunteers focused on mulching areas of the grassy meadow that had been worked in the past few months. Mulching is so important for habitat restoration because it helps prevent invasive species from returning. Areas of disturbed soil should have at least 4 to 6 inches of mulch to prevent the return of unwanted plants. Even though we mulched the grassy meadow as we were removing plants, the mulch had been disturbed by foot traffic and settled, so more was needed.
In addition to mulching, we had volunteers continue to remove European hawthorn and blackberry. We also had several members of Verizon’s Green Team join us, and they focused on locating and removing Scotch broom.
If you’re interested in joining our March work party, you can sign up here.
