Sockeye salmon at the Ballard locks. It will make its way back to the Cedar River (via Lk WA) to its birthplace, turning red & green, to lay eggs and then die.
If you live south of the ship canal in the Seattle area, you're drinking water comes from the Cedar River and is impacted by its watershed. A bit downstream of the spot our drinking water is pulled from, we worked in the Cavanaugh Pond Natural Area with King County Parks, to hand-water a riverside native planting.
The kids were thrilled to be assigned water-wading in the mellow river which was running low due to the snow drought. We enjoyed a short naturalist talk about the importance of vegetated, gravel habitat in the salmon's lifecycle. And also the importance of cool water, which is a challenge in low-flow years. The heavy-lifting work, hauling buckets from the river to the young snowberries, cedars, maples, willows and roses helps to establish a healthy forest that will provide many benefits to the riverine ecosystem- shade, insects, water-filtration, erosion control, woody debris, etc.
Some work battling blackberries was accomplished also, as this site used to be a gigantic noxious thicket; which would grow back without consistent stewardship. Needless to say, we all enjoyed the cool river play after a hot afternoon's efforts. Lovely and very fun!
