Washington State - Cascade Chapter

South King County Group

Eighth Semiannual Restoration at Soos Creek Park

By Peter Rimbos

On Saturday, March 24, the South King County Group (SKCG), in cooperation with Friends of Soos Creek Park and King County Parks, held its 8^th semiannual restoration at Soos Creek Park. With this most recent event, we’ve now completed four years of restoration work at the park, a beautiful ribbon of greenery running through Renton, Kent, and Covington that provides exceptional wildlife habitat in an otherwise urban setting.

Despite poor weather conditions, 18 volunteers turned out to uproot ivy, gird ivy from majestic trees, and make tremendous progress at what is probably the worst ivy infestation in the park. In fact, the effort involved in restoring this area is probably the single hardest task we’ve undertaken there. Now that the central core of the infestation has been cleared, the work that remains consists of clearing the perimeter and replanting with native species. We expect to tackle that work this coming Fall at our 9^th semiannual restoration.

The SKCG expresses its deepest thanks for the hard work contributed by all who attended. Your efforts, particularly given the weather and tough job we took on, made the day a resounding success. We have a wonderful community asset in Soos Creek Park of which we can all be proud!

Climate Change Presentation

On Tuesday, March 27, at our Bi-Monthly Meeting the SKCG’s Peter Rimbos gave a presentation on Climate Change at Wesley Gardens in Des Moines. The presentation was well-received by an audience of 50 people. The presentation dealt with the history of climate change, as well as the latest scientific data, potential solutions, and actions underway. An enthusiastic and informative question-and-answer session closed out the evening.

As a follow-up, the SKCG will host Al Gore's Academy Award-winning An Inconvenient Truth in May (see Meetings, Outings, & Events). More and more people are aware of climate change and, thus, working to address it. Sierra Club Cool City and Cool State campaigns are working at state and local levels. Finally, the federal government is waking up to the problem: Congress is proposing and reviewing actions, the 2008 presidential candidates are discussing climate change, and there are several climate change cases before the US Supreme Court. On April 2, the US Supreme Court ruled in a major decision that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases!