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Happy Holidays and New Year!
Wishing you the best in the new year! In the picture: The Watershed Company staff at a wetland mitigation site on Novelty Hill in Redmond, WA, where we have been helping Puget Sound Energy.
Interpretive Signs for Stormwater Projects
This year The Watershed Company's graphic design team got to create interpretive signs for three different stormwater and low impact development projects, for a total of 13 signs on topics ranging from filtering runoff with raingardens and stormwater ponds, to allowing infiltration by using permeable paving, to planting drought-tolerant plants.
The Watershed Company researched, wrote, illustrated, and designed five interpretive signs for a stormwater retrofit project along Bear Creek in Redmond.
King County DOT hired The Watershed Company to create two interpretive signs to draw attention to stormwater improvements in Federal Way, including a new raingarden and permeable pavement sidewalks.
For Premera Healthcare, we created 6 signs to accompany a mitigation and parking lot landscape that included raingardens and bioswales.
Secret Santa Gift: Edible Culvert
Every December, The Watershed Company staff does a Secret Santa gift exchange. This year, Amy created an edible culvert cake for our new water resources engineer, Sky, complete with salmon, large woody debris, and boulders!
Watershed Staff Volunteers with Papua New Guinea Bird Study
Senior Wildlife Biologist Suzanne Tomassi spends much of her free time working as an ornithologist with the non-profit organization Puget Sound Bird Observatory, of which she is a founding member and active board member, and traveling to far-away places to study birds. This year she traveled to Papua New Guinea for 6 weeks. She shares a little about her trip below:
This spring I had the great privilege of assisting Dr. Bruce Beehler, Vice President of the Indonesia-Pacific Islands research program of Conservation International, on a climate change study in Papua New Guinea's YUS Conservation Area. The study is looking at a number of taxa, including plants, along an elevational transect on the island. The YUS Conservation Area is the first of its kind, implemented after years of hard work by the Woodland Park Zoo's Tree Conservation Program and Dr. Lisa Dabek. Dr. Beehler's work focuses on birds, and I mist-netted from about 2,400m, to 3,010m, cataloging species occurrences.
The species diversity is not all that high at that elevation. We caught more than 100 individuals on some days, and a total of 910 birds, comprising 42 species. Our captures included many endemics and near-endemics, isolated by the high mountain peaks of the Finisterre range on the Huon Peninsula. Spangled honeyeater, Huon bowerbird, lesser melampitta and Huon Melidectes all ended up in our nets, and we encountered the emperor bird of paradise, Wahnes' bird of paradise, Meyer's goshawk, and many others on our long hikes between camps. Each species was a life-lister for me. Altogether, we recorded 12 species outside of their previously reported range.
The transect runs from sea level to more than 3,000m, and nowhere was that elevation change more evident than along the trails we traversed! Despite having local porters carry our supplies, the walking was challenging, to say the least. There are no roads, and trails are steep, slippery, and subject to landslides, and often cross raging rivers in deep ravines. Our travels were at the whim of the many local clans; fortunately, our hosts were gracious as well as fascinating.
As excruciating as it would become to eat the tubers manioc and 'kao kao' day after day, we were never wanting for new experiences. Whether extracting a new and wholly unfamiliar bird from a net, witnessing a "Sing-Sing" celebration in honor of World Environment Day, awakening to earthquakes five times in one week, or waiting two days with no communication when the bush plane failed to pick me up, every moment was incomparable to anything I'd ever participated in before. I'm grateful that the people of Papua New Guinea are working together to protect the YUS Conservation Area, and I look forward to another trip up the transect to further document the ranges of the Huon's unique avifauna.
Staff in the Community
Watershed Company wetland biologist Jenni, as well as company president Bill and vice-president Nancy, participated in the Mountain to Sound Greenway 20th Anniversary Trek last week.
Watershed Company staff and their families participated in an Izaak Walton League kids fishing derby over the 4th of July. IWL is a conservation organization dedicated to preservation of natural resources and clean water.
Photo of the Month: Redwing Blackbird Nest
A willow sapling planted as part of a wetland mitigation project creates a suitable perch for this redwing blackbird nest. (Photo taken: summer 2010, Puget Sound Energy -Duvall Park Wetland Mitigation site)
Photo of the Month: Pacific Treefrog
This Pacific treefrog was observed at the Pierce County Landfill Wetland Mitigation site, which The Watershed Company is continuing to monitor. Pacific treefrogs prefer to breed in shallow, seasonal ponds that have low water level fluctuations. More than two dozen such ponds were created at the mitigation site with the intention of providing quality amphibian breeding habitat. The site has exceeded performance standards for amphibian habitat, providing quality habitat for a number of amphibian species, including Pacific treefrogs, red-legged frogs, Northwest salamanders and long-toed salamanders.
