Advocating for Urban Forest Protection in new Green Issaquah Program
The City of Issaquah recently announced plans to develop a Green Issaquah program to “build upon existing city-wide community stewardship efforts and foster long-term support for restoration and maintenance of Issaquah’s parks and natural areas.”
This partnership with Forterra provides an amazing opportunity for the city to make a concerted effort to protect the urban forests in Issaquah. They are currently conducting a forest assessment to better understand our area’s stewardship needs.
The Issaquah Alps Trails club fully supports this effort, and is excited to see this major step forward to take action to protect urban forests. Our VP of Advocacy, David Kappler, writes a letter to the parks board commending this decision, and calling for even further action to coordinate with multiple land owners to prevent the spread of noxious weeds.
Read the letter below.
Dear Members of the Park Board:
I am writing this as a personal opinion, the Issaquah Alps Trails Club will be composing a more comprehensive response and I am sure I will have more to say as this progresses along.
This issue is very timely and the city has taken a big step forward. The need for action has become greater as invasive plants such as holly and ivy are more common, die back problems with big leaf maples, sword ferns and western red cedar trees on city property are also becoming more common.
Our city forested areas come right up to state DNR lands, two state parks and county parks on Cougar and Squak. There are owned lands and easements for utility corridors through city lands which have significant management issues especially with invasive plants.
Recently, I have been working on a couple of trail connection issues that King County Parks is pursuing. While doing field work in scouting out options I have been crossing city park property, city public works property, Talus developer retained property and Talus HOA property and have found significant invasive plants on all types of ownerships.
Beyond city park property we need to work with our public and private land owners both in and adjoining the city.
There are significant natural features often associated with wetlands, creeks and steep slopes that are owned by our public works department or HOAs that lack management.
Yes, I am proposing a bigger effort than just the city owned urban forest lands, but without a significant effort on those non city park lands long term protection and enhancement of our city forest lands is not possible.
David Kappler