By Hugh Saffel, WNPF Volunteer
While walking along almost any trail in Olympic National Park it’s hard to imagine that the dense and diverse plant life would need any help to grow. The whole of it seems like a massive nursery. Yet human beings need to play a role in this, frequently correcting previous actions.
The key part of Olympic National Park’s native plant restoration efforts really started with the removal of the dams on the Elwha River. As the water receded, huge areas of bare land were exposed. The Matt Albright Native Plant Center and its plant nursery was created to raise the hundreds of thousands of plants needed to revegetate these areas. More than 40,000 hours of labor by thousands of volunteers made this work possible.
Restoring native vegetation to the Elwha Valley was crucial to quickly support the range of wildlife and to enable the historic salmon to thrive again in the river. As explained by the Olympic National Park’s supervisory botanist Janet Coles, “Without the native vegetation you don’t have the cover that provides shade along the stream, so the waters become too warm, and the salmon don’t recover. It’s all tied together.”
Once the Elwha River project was complete, the capabilities of the center were turned to producing plants for other projects throughout Olympic National Park and the other national parks in the area. The nursery has grown over the years into a resource center that supplies the Pacific West Region with native plants and revegetation expertise. Each year, the center’s partner affiliations grow, and the nursery has become a leader for public lands revegetation and restoration stewardship.
Matt Albright’s dream continuesMatt Albright grew up in the area and worked for many years as a botanist in Olympic National Park. Throughout his career he was deeply committed to creating and restoring native plant habitats. After Matt passed away people wanted to continue his legacy, and this led to the Matt Albright Native Plant Center. It has become a resource for native plants but also a place that nurtures volunteers, embodying the inclusive spirit of the national parks.
“This work is all done by hand, and we need many hands,” says Coles. The Rehab Restore Volunteer Program at the center welcomed 160 volunteers this year, who contributed a collective 1,450 hours of service to the park.
The funding provided by the Washington’s National Park Fund is crucial to getting the revegetation work done. The funding allows us to have a volunteer coordinator whose job it is to recruit, mentor, and train the hundreds of volunteers every year.”—Janet Coles, Supervisory Botanist, Olympic National Park
Volunteers assist the Olympic revegetation effort in both front country and wilderness backcountry areas. Volunteers collect seeds and cuttings, assist with propagation and care of native plants in the nursery, help conduct germination tests, and propagation experiments.
Work in the field includes soil preparation, installing erosion control devices, applying mulch or erosion mats, and transplanting propagated plants. The center enhances the volunteer program by providing drop-in volunteer opportunities, which allow the park to provide volunteer experiences to visitors no matter their level of time commitment. According to Coles:
Our volunteers are the most amazing people. These are local people. These are people from across the United States. These are people who love our national parks and know the importance of coming to a space and making it better when they leave.”
Washington’s National Park Fund recently announced a new core project funding priority area: “Embracing Inclusion.” That means supporting projects that foster an environment in the parks where people who experience more life barriers based on their identities can feel welcome and that they belong. The Matt Albright Native Plant Center and the Rehab Restore Volunteer Program are excellent examples of donor-supported projects that help to welcome diverse groups of people into the park.
“Washington’s National Park Fund is our lifeline. The funds provide support for our efforts to bring youth groups and under-represented groups to teach stewardship and to connect them to the park as volunteers,” says Heather Stephens, Volunteer Youth Coordinator at Olympic National Park.
Diversity is as important to the ecosystem of the park as it is to the people who volunteer and visit, and the funding provided by Washington’s National Park Fund helps make it possible for all of these different groups to experience the park. They deeply engage, literally on the ground, contributing their time and hard work. The center has welcomed LGBTQ crews and American Sign Language crews who completed work in the wilderness areas in the park – a first for many of these young people. Young people are also welcomed into the park’s Native Plant Center for learning opportunities, and this year the center served more than 100 students from three different schools and organizations. All come away energized and committed to the future of the national parks.
This year, the volunteers at Olympic produced and planted more than 14,000 native plants and collected and sowed 31 pounds of native seed in the park, focusing their efforts on restoring a large meadow at Hurricane Ridge, the new Heart O’ the Hills entrance station, several locations around Lake Crescent, the Ozette campground, and the Queets campground. Volunteers were essential to all this work – so come out and join us!
If you are interested in volunteering at the Matt Albright Native Plant Center, drop-in volunteer days are Mondays and Wednesdays 9:00am to 4:00pm. Contact the park by email or call (360) 565-2976 for more information or to receive monthly updates about volunteer opportunities at the Matt Albright Native Plant Center. Or if you’d like to support the program with a donation, consider giving to Washington’s National Park Fund.
Washington’s National Park Fund is the official philanthropic partner to Mount Rainier, North Cascades, and Olympic National Parks. We raise private support to preserve and protect Washington’s national parks by funding scientific research, youth and family experiences, and projects that will keep these parks strong and vital now and forever, for everyone.