Last month, KCD’s Riparian Program teamed up with restoration interns from Youth Engaged in Sustainable Systems (YESS) for their final work party of the summer, preparing a restoration site along a salmon bearing tributary to the Snoqualmie River called Gardiners Creek.
YESS is a program from Mountain to Sound Greenway Trust and the Pacific Education Institute directed toward building environmental professional skills for high school students. YESS interns gain training, summer income, and school credit while spending their summer outdoors, contributing to meaningful efforts to salmon habitat restoration.
The YESS interns worked with KCD staff to remove invasive plants like Himalayan blackberry from a targeted area. This is an important first step in the restoration process and they made way for later mechanical removal of the remaining nonnative vegetation, and for planting native trees and shrubs.
It was a total treat to join the YESS team in the field, share career experiences with them, nerd out about nature, and discuss sci-fi novels while pulling blackberry! We look forward to seeing their future impacts for our natural world.
