PORT TOWNSEND — The Northwest Watershed Institute is launching a new monthly volunteer program called Dabob Days.
Once a month from November through June, local youth leaders and Northwest Watershed Institute (NWI) staff will guide small groups of community volunteers in supporting ongoing habitat restoration projects along Tarboo Creek and Dabob Bay.
“Dabob Days is a fun way for people to join together to restore habitat for wildlife, avoid cabin fever, and experience more of this special area of Tarboo Creek and Dabob Bay,” said Megan Brookens, education and outreach director for the Port Townsend-based nonprofit.
The first event is this Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. To register, email megan@nwwatershed.org.
Brookens said monthly projects will include removing tree protectors from thriving young trees, cleaning debris from beaches, propagating plants in the NWI nursery, planting trees, preventing non-native weeds from overpowering restoration sites, and other projects depending on the time of year.
Since 2002, NWI has worked with 45 partner organizations on a landscape-scale effort to conserve and restore wild salmon and wildlife habitat in the Tarboo Creek-Dabob Bay watershed along Hood Canal.
The institute owns and stewards the 500-acre Tarboo Wildlife Preserve in the heart of Tarboo valley and works with neighboring landowners and agencies on habitat conservation from the headwaters of Tarboo Creek to the far reaches of Dabob Bay.
“Once an initial restoration project is completed, like a tree planting, we need to maintain and steward the site for at least several more years to ensure success,” Brookens said.
“Dabob Days is a natural outgrowth of NWI’s work with local schools and community organizations on volunteer projects such as the annual Plant-A-Thon (in February) in which students have planted thousands of trees each year,” Brookens said.
“Dabob Days also gives high school students who have been educated in NWI’s annual Youth Environmental Stewards course an opportunity to help lead these events for people of all ages,” she added.
Volunteers will get to know the scope of restoration projects with NWI and help install cages around recently planted trees that have been getting eaten by wildlife at the Tarboo Wildlife Preserve.
“This is a big task, but together we can help more native plants survive and thrive,” Brookens said.
Funding to run Dabob Days is made possible by the Clif Family Foundation and Washington State’s No Child Left Inside grant program.
To get more information about Dabob Days, email megan@nwwatershed.org. To learn more about NWI, see www.nwwatershed.org.
Volunteers in 2022 plant live stakes in cardboard mulch to restore wetland vegetation invaded by reed canary grass along upper Tarboo Creek.
