Soos Creek Restoration Project

On April 23rd, the South King County Group, in cooperation with Friends of Soos Creek and King County Parks, held its 4th semi-annual service outing at Soos Creek Park. Located on Kent’s East Hill and adjacent to the urban separator, the park protects a vital ribbon of high-quality wildlife habitat and provides low impact recreational opportunities to the public, both of which will become ever more essential as the region develops.

Forty volunteers—composed of Sierra Club and Friends of Soos Creek members, as well as unaffiliated citizens and one soldier from Fort Lewis—turned out. Many thanks to all those who helped! We tackled a particularly tough patch of “old growth” Scotch Broom and succeeded in clearing about 60% of the area. We will return to the site this fall to finish the removal job and replant the area in native species. Our work at the park will be ongoing; we will continue to couple our long-term habitat restoration efforts with work we have already begun to protect and expand the park itself.

Web Site Remodel

Please visit our upgraded website at http://cascade.sierraclub.org/southkingcounty. There are new pages, such as “Writing Letters to the Editor” and “Calendar,” chock full of useful information. We’ve expanded our “links” to include other environmental organizations, government officials and agencies, local and regional newspapers, and voter information. Finally, we have added a new array of photographs of our targeted critical places in south King County, such as Soos Creek Park, that we care about and wish to preserve. Please contact our webmaster, long-time Sierra Club and Rainier Audubon member, Nancy Hertzel, at Autumn207@comcast.net. She would love to display photographs of places important to you and your family, for your fellow Sierra Club members to enjoy.

Other Activities

As another political season approaches, the group is working on its plan of attack by identifying which local races to target in an effort to make a difference at the city and county levels. If you have an interest in participating in our efforts to elect environmentally responsible local politicians, please contact Mark Johnston at (253) 639-3862.  Volunteer activities include interviewing candidates as part of our endorsement process, and post-endorsement support in the form of doorbelling, phone banking, and literature distribution. Help us make a difference in south King County!