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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Tacoma teems with little forest oases. This team tends them for the environment and us

By Becca Most News Tribune

TACOMA – The vision of an urban prairie is taking root in a vacant lot of a south Tacoma neighborhood.

Digging a shovel into the earth, 21-year-old Washington Conversations Corps member Aaron Rosenberg demonstrated how to “grub up” thorny invasive blackberries earlier this month. Farther down the path other corps members chatted as they ripped up a low growing plant called stinky bob to make space for other species to grow in the restored oak woodland habitat.

It’s not an easy task, but it’s a satisfying one for a crew whose mission is to save Tacoma’s urban forests.

Unlike recreational parks, which are managed by Metro Parks Tacoma or the City of Tacoma Public Works and are developed for community access and recreation, “passive open spaces” are managed by Tacoma’s Open Space Program.

Passive open space makes up about 500 acres of city-owned forests, wetlands, streams, slopes and wildlife habitats in Tacoma. In north and northeast Tacoma, that can look like steep slopes, like Schuster Slope along the west shore of Commencement Bay. In south Tacoma, passive open space can look like wetlands and prairie-oak woodlands.

By restoring native species and addressing the decline of these natural spaces, Tacoma’s Open Space Program team fosters resiliency in the Puget Sound ecosystem. Most of those spaces provide valuable habitat for animals, plants and pollinators, offer stormwater benefits and help combat climate change.

This team is making up for lost time: Restoration work like this wasn’t invested in prior to 2014, said restoration ecologist Brandon Drucker. The work they do is funded by Tacoma’s stormwater rates.

Without their care, there could be dangerous consequences.

Over time, the acreage of wild areas in Tacoma has declined in favor of urban development. In the areas that remain, invasive species like English ivy and Himalayan blackberry choke out native trees and plants, and illegal deforestation contributes to habitat loss and erosion, harming Puget Sound and other waterways around town, Drucker said.

In 100 years, without direct and aggressive intervention to remove non-native species, Tacoma’s urban forests could be gone, according to the city. Right now, more than 90% of passive open space acres in Tacoma are affected by invasive vegetation.

“(Urban forests) are just kind of chewed up from around the edges, and over time they can disappear to development,” Drucker said. “But what we’re more seeing is they start to get degraded. The ivy and the blackberry will just kind of blanket everything. And then people don’t think of them as highly, so we start to see more illegal cutting. It’s kind of like a snowball situation. When you don’t demonstrate care for a space, a lot of times they can degrade in a spiraling way.”

Taking steps to save wild spaces

On the north end of Tacoma the team works to manage steep slopes and plant the right vegetation to stop landslides caused by erosion. Now they’ve made the shift to focus on south and east Tacoma, Drucker said.

“One of the big things, especially in south Tacoma, is their lack of tree canopy,” said Kevin Sandin, a Washington Conservation Corps supervisor and chainsaw specialist on the team. “These pockets of forested areas are really important for the heat-island effect, but also just providing a green space for people in the community to look through and enjoy and see the importance of habitat restoration.”

The heat-island effect can happen when an area doesn’t have enough tree canopy or vegetation. Concrete absorbs and releases the heat during the day and night, which can result in high variability of temperature ranges, Sandin said.

“In areas like this, you know, it could be 10 degrees hotter than an area that has street trees … surrounding it,” Sandin said.

The team plants trees and shrubs, installs erosion-control measures and cares for a native plant nursery near the Tacoma landfill, among other tasks, Drucker said.

Investing in the environment will make air and water cleaner, reduce erosion, provide stormwater benefits and combat global warming, he said.

“It’s incredible what you find in a really urbanized neighborhood,” Drucker said. “We’re finding owls and woodpeckers and frogs and newts … and, of course, deer and coyotes. These spaces feel like islands and oases or refuges.”

Younger generation leading the charge

Part of Sandin’s job is providing outreach to local communities and high schools, engaging residents and young people in the importance of environmental stewardship. Sandin said he wishes there was a program like this when he was 18 because it could have helped him understand what he wanted to do with his career.

Many crew members are part of the Washington Conservation Corps, which is a program through AmeriCorps and the Washington Department of Ecology. Field-crew members receive a biweekly living allowance and a federal grant they can use toward higher education upon completion of 11-, nine- or three-month positions.

Corps members must be 18-25 years old. The application for next year’s program opens in July.

Sandin said he likes the diversity of work and projects the day-to-day brings but said it’s the young people that make the most impact.

“But I think the biggest thing for me is working with a new group of people every year and watching them grow from knowing nothing, to knowing every plant out in the field and watching them get stronger and more knowledgeable,” he said. “That’s why I keep doing it year after year.”

After graduating in the pandemic, 25-year-old corps member Joseph Watts said it was hard to find a job as an environmental science major, but he’s enjoyed his second year with WCC.

“The environment, as far as people think about restoration, is often an idea of a land out in the mountains in the middle of nowhere, where everything’s very pristine. But the space where people actually spend their time, where people, communities live, that stuff is very important, and often really forgotten about and goes to the wayside,” Watts said.

“So even though some of these sites aren’t a pristine kind of wilderness area, and they have their flaws, it’s going to benefit a lot more people, honestly. So I think it’s important work, it’s hard work. But it really makes a difference in people’s lives. Having a nice, open green space that they can spend their time in is important.”

Many Open Spaces sites have regular volunteer habitat restoration work opportunities and events.