By Sarah Brown, Stewardship Program Manager
NSEA’s community work parties, events where volunteers gather to work together and support salmon habitat restoration projects, began in the early 1990s due to the passion and determination of NSEA’s founding board members. What started as a dozen friends bringing their own shovels from home has grown into thousands of community members working on lands and waters throughout Whatcom County to make a difference for salmon.
Earth Day Work Party, 1991
Bringing together the power of people is how we celebrate holidays centered around service each year, especially Earth Day. Earth Day began April 22, 1970, and has since transformed from a few dedicated public servants into a worldwide annual movement engaging a billion people in sustaining and protecting our planet. In 2026, NSEA had the opportunity to host not just one but three events over Earth Week to celebrate this environmental movement.
Volunteers remove invasive plants along Kenney Creek
Community partners celebrate Earth Day together
For the first event, 65 volunteers joined NSEA, the Whatcom Land Trust (WLT), and the Whatcom Conservation District (WCD) in furthering the restoration efforts of Lower Kenney Creek, a North Fork Nooksack River tributary that provides habitat for Chinook, pink, coho, and chum salmon, steelhead, plus eagles and other wildlife. This day of removing invasive vegetation builds on over a year of collaborative work between WLT, WCD, Whatcom County, and NSEA, including two acres of native tree plantings, two removed fish passage barriers, and large woody debris added along the creek.
A volunteer frees a tree from a cage it has outgrown
On Earth Day, four volunteers joined NSEA’s Stream Team to return to a restoration site along Kendall Creek that was planted in 2002. They walked over an acre of the site to remove cages from 60 native trees that were outgrowing them. This puts the trees at risk of being girdled and damaged by the caging originally installed to protect them from deer and beavers. This maintenance ensures that the time, resources, and effort put into restoring this section of creek over two decades ago will continue to benefit Kendall Creek. These trees are now free to continue growing to provide shade and improve water quality for salmon.
Volunteers happily work together to improve habitat along Squalicum Creek
Finally, on the last Saturday of Earth Week, 181 volunteers removed over a dozen different types of invasive weeds from the City of Bellingham’s Squalicum Creek Re-route Project site. This project, fully completed in 2021, rerouted Squalicum Creek around Sunset Pond and transformed Bug Lake into a forested wetland, while redirecting the creek through a historic channel on the south side of this new wetland. Continued support in maintaining this site guarantees the long-term success of improving water quality and habitat for coho, pink, chum, and Chinook salmon, and steelhead in Squalicum Creek.
Each of these events were centered around Earth Day and followed a similar theme of connecting past action to current and future progress, building upon years and years of work with the power of a dedicated community and collaborative partners. NSEA work parties continue to operate with that original intention created 35 years ago: bringing people together to act for salmon.
Volunteers working towards the same goal at an Earth Day work party
35 years ago: Restoring habitat for salmon
