The Nature Conservancy’s Partners to Preserves program has been awarded a grant through Washington’s No Child Left Inside grant program to support bringing 400 youth to TNC preserves across Washington over the next two years.
TNC’s Partners to Preserves program works with organizations serving youth to bring their outdoor programs to TNC preserves in Pacific, Jefferson, Okanagan, San Juan Island, Kitsap, Snohomish, Kittitas, Grant, and Douglas counties. Youth will participate in science and learn natural and cultural history, art, hiking, and camping.
“We’re thrilled and grateful for this opportunity to expand our program and support youth from diverse communities who are most impacted by lack of access to nature,” said Alfonso Orozco, TNC’s Volunteer and Outdoor Experiences Manager, who manages the Partners to Preserves program. “Through partnering with organizations already doing excellent work and supporting them in realizing their own goals, we can use our preserves as natural learning platforms for outdoor experiences.”
TNC will work with partner organizations World Relief, Team Naturaleza, Kandelia, Coast Salish Youth Stewardship Corps, and others to bring youth to explore and learn about our many Washington preserves. The $63,630 grant, through the No Child Left Inside grant managed by the Washington Recreation & Conservation Office (RCO), will enable TNC to quadruple the number of youth served by the program Orozco said.
“World Relief Seattle is excited to partner with TNC to provide unique outdoor educational experiences for refugee children,” said Katie Stoppler, Health and Wellness Manager for the organization which serves refugees and immigrants in the greater Seattle area. “Not only will refugee children have access to the rich and diverse environment in the Pacific Northwest, but these experiences will increase a sense of home and community for our newest neighbors.”
The grant will cover transportation, supplies, meals, the development of educational toolkits, and stipends to trip leaders as they bring youth to these preserves: Yellow Island Preserve, Pratt Preserve at Ebey’s Landing, Port Susan Bay Preserve, Moses Coulee/Beezley Hills preserves, Hoh River Recreation and Conservation Area, Ellsworth Creek Preserve, Central Cascades Forest and Barker Mountain Preserve.
The state’s No Child Left Inside grant program focuses on removing barriers that prevent youth from accessing outdoor experiences and nature-based education. This year’s grants will help more than 50,000 kids spend nearly 1.5 million hours outside, doing everything from hiking to kayaking to camping.
The Taneum watershed, in the heart of the Central Cascades but only a 90-minute drive from Seattle, provides an awesome place to play outside. Locals and visitors flock to the area to hike, camp, bike, ski, fish, snowmobile, horseback ride, hunt and more. But, though the opportunities to enjoy nature here are tremendous, there’s so much more to the Taneum.
The Greenway
The Taneum watershed is part of the 1.5-million acre Mountains to Sound Greenway, a National Heritage Area connecting communities with nature from Seattle to Ellensburg. The Greenway Trust is an indispensable partner and tireless advocate for protecting the headwaters of the Yakima River.
In addition to the something-for-everyone outdoor activities in the area, the “checkerboard” forest lands of the Taneum are important habitat for rare and endangered fish and wildlife and are a precious water source near the headwaters of the Yakima River. This watershed supports agriculture, outdoor recreation and natural resource economies – both up in the Central Cascades and downstream in the Yakima Valley.
Watch our new video about this project
The Power of LWCF
Permanently reauthorized and permanently funded one year ago this summer as part of the 2020 Great American Outdoors Act, LWCF is our country’s most important conservation program. With $14.5 million in LWCF funding to support this transfer, the OWNF can take major strides toward restoring forest health and resolving the inefficient pattern of checkerboard ownership that has dogged land managers and frustrated forest users for decades.
We are proud to partner with the Okanogan Wenatchee National Forest (OWNF) on a project to protect 12,000 irreplaceable acres in the Taneum. Located south of I-90 and the communities of Easton and South Cle Elum, and northwest of the LT Murray Wildlife area, the Taneum is part of a “checkerboard” legacy of land ownership. With support from the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) this project would transfer 12,000 acres of privately owned parcels to the National Forest. This transfer will improve management efficiencies and public access in addition to protecting the landscape for fish, wildlife, water users and future generations.
The parcels highlighted in orange below – already nearly surrounded by the OWNF – are part of this year’s project. Click on the map for a larger view of this checkerboard landscape.
since time began
The Taneum watershed is located within the ceded lands of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation. Descendants of the original inhabitants of these lands still steward the area today, protecting it for future generations. Leaders from the Yakama Indian Nation have generously lent their support to this LWCF project through the years.
Water is the lifeblood of Central Washington, and the health of the Yakima River impacts the well-being and livelihoods of tens of thousands of Washingtonians: members of the Yakama Indian Nation, farmers and vintners downstream in the Yakima Valley, and municipal water users from the City of Yakima to the Tri-Cities. The Yakima River is critical habitat for salmon and steelhead, and protecting the Taneum is crucial to improving the Upper Yakima Watershed’s ability to store and deliver clean water for fish and wildlife, agricultural irrigators, and thousands of urban, suburban and rural households.
Home to Ponderosa pines, large mammals like elk and bear, rare and threatened species such as wolverines and spotted owls, as well as 200 species of birds, the Taneum is under pressure. Water is especially valuable here, and it’s increasingly scarce. The Yakima River is strained by increasing demand for irrigation and a growing population, climate change and wildfire. Partners working to restore the watershed as part of the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan are seeking to manage the risks and balance the demands with coordinated efforts to protect groundwater, store surface water, remove barriers to fish passage and provide high-quality recreation access and opportunities.
Story and Photos by Matt Axling, Yellow Island Steward
I am a terrible swimmer. I sink straight to the bottom of the pool. I avoided swimming lessons my entire life. When I smell the chlorine at my son’s swim lessons, my palms sweat. With all of these factors, it is ironic that I have spent so much of my life on the water.
I am a mediocre biker. What I lack in talent I make up for with effort and silly biking socks. I really love biking to work. The morning commute has put me in a great state of mind as I arrived at various past jobs. And an uphill ride back to my house helps me leave my workday behind and be present for my family when I arrive home. I first started biking to work in Seattle in 1993 when I worked a summer job at a cherry processing factory in Georgetown. Nobody was riding their bikes around Seattle at the time. There were no bike lanes or established bike routes. My shortcuts included cutting through the Kingdome parking lot and the SoDo rail yard. I was hooked.
After accepting the position as steward for Yellow Island for The Nature Conservancy, my bike commuting has taken a back seat. In no way can I complain about my current work commute. I hop in the trusty Yellow Island boat in Friday Harbor, and zip out to Yellow Island in 25 minutes. Traffic consists of pods of orcas blocking my route and the only time I am forced to slow down is when the wind is blowing.
Yellow Island sits in San Juan Channel. 85% of the time, the weather is cooperative and the trip to Yellow is uneventful. The other 15% of the time, you don’t want to be on the water.
Orca cruises past the Yellow Island cabin that is occasional home to island steward Matt Axling.
Yellow Island cabin amidst the storm.
The Yellow Island boat was built in the late 1980s in Anacortes. It is a fiberglass landing craft that is good for hauling trash, tools, or people. It has dutifully sat in the water for close to 30 years as various caretakers have navigated their way to and from the island. The boat is powered by an 85hp Tohatsu outboard engine. The engine was purchased on the same day that I was hired four years ago. Since that time, I have put 300 hours of travel time on the engine.
The Yellow Island boat tied up on the shore.
I am very conscious about my boat usage and that 85hp engine has often given me pause. It is easy to see how a motorboat can have an adverse impact on the marine environment. Outboard boat engines are not known for their fuel efficiency. Also a boat traveling through the water at 20 knots and emitting a roar so loud that I wear ear protection are other factors which can impact marine mammals, birds and fish. At times, that engine has seemed incongruous with our mission.
May was Bike to Work Month. This was our second straight Bike to Work Month where we did not participate in bike to work due to COVID. So, in an effort to align my commute with TNC’s mission, to get a little exercise, and to have a spring project to focus on, I decided that May 2021 should be “Row to Work Month.”
THe Right boat
The waters around Yellow Island can be a little dicey. While San Juan Island offers some shelter to Yellow Island from the seasonal SW wind blowing in from the Straits of Juan de Fuca, the currents and wind dynamics of San Juan Channel can be tricky. Kayaking to Yellow Island is something that should only be done under perfect conditions, and if I was going to power myself to Yellow for an entire month, I was going to need a bigger boat.
My mother and uncle were kids who grew up in Ballard. Like most Norwegian immigrants, they have boating in their blood and various derelict boats in their driveways. My mom owns a 14-foot Whitehall rowboat built by Gig Harbor Boatworks. This model boat rows like a dream and is used as an open water rowboat by people traveling through the Inside Passage. The boat was rebuilt by my uncle a few years ago. I hadn’t seen either of them in over a year due to COVID. I scheduled my COVID shot for late April in their hometown as an excuse to go pick up the boat. As I was leaving with the boat in tow, my mom came running out of the house waving a small object and yelling “DON’T FORGET THE PLUG!!!!” I was off to a good start.
The 14-foot Whitehall rowboat at rest.
Fast forward to the end of May. I have now commuted the entire month out to Yellow using my rowboat. I have rowed about 44 miles during 5 round trips excursions to Yellow.
As I expected, I saw and experienced many beautiful and amazing things by slowing down. I rowed near a pod of orcas which seemed much bigger and waaaaay more intimidating than when I am in my motorboat. I hugged the shoreline and saw guillemots fledging for the first time. I picked up some marine debris which washed up on a rock during a winter storm. When I was hot, I hid in the shadows of San Juan Island, and when I was cold, I rowed in the sun in the middle of the channel. I laughed at my ridiculously slow progress when I was rowing against the current and enjoyed several exciting trips downwind.
Matt Axling at the oars.
Closeup visit with an orca.
You never know what you’ll find in the water, including this old tire.
Some days are barefoot days.
What I didn’t expect was how solo rowing for a month would connect me to so many people. Bike commuting has some similar parallels. Simply because you are not behind a windshield, you are forced to interact with everyone in your surroundings. You talk with all kinds of people. I noticed this when I was leading international bike trips in Argentina and Norway with groups of youth. Even though we didn’t share a similar language or culture, the bike would bring people together because it was a common experience.
At the Port of Friday Harbor, my little rowboat soon became a focal point for many people. I received a phone call from somebody who wanted to buy the boat on the spot. People were often gathered around it when I arrived in the morning or waved at me when I was rowing through the port. I soon became known as “the guy who was rowing to Yellow”.
lessons learned from a month of rowing
May is my busiest month of the year on Yellow. The flowers were out and people flock to Yellow to see the progression of blooms.
Indian paintbrush in bloom with the Whitehall rowboat floating in the distance.
Due to COVID protocols requiring me to keep my distance from the public, I spent much of the month talking with the public while sitting a safe distance away at my picnic table. With my rowboat tied up to the mooring ball behind me, eventually the conversation would turn to the boat.
“Are you rowing to Yellow? (yup)
“From where?” (Friday Harbor)
“How long does it take?” (Depends on wind and tide but about 1 ½ hrs)
“Aren’t you tired?” (Yes – but in a good way).
“Why are you rowing?”
It was this last question which sparked the most conversation. Yellow Island is indeed a special piece of land. It is unlike anything that exists in Washington and is truly unique. Its conservation value is important, but I think its true power is its ability to connect people to our work. People who come to Yellow aren’t just looking for flowers. They are looking for a connection to the land. The reason I was rowing to Yellow Island changed over the course of the month. What started out as a fun side project, turned into a deeper conversation about ways to do things differently. How the ways we have viewed stewardship, and people’s ability to access our lands needs to evolve and grow and to include more voices. Just like rowing the boat, sometimes we need to slow down and take the time to value the quality and depth of our work and relationships which we are trying to build.
As I write this, I have a few more rowing trips to complete this month. Visitation is quieting down and my busiest month of the year is coming to an end. Signs of summer are in the air: pregnant seals are returning to the island, spotted towhees are singing and the Island’s flowers are going to seed. Rowing back and forth has reminded me to look at our work from all different angles. If we listen and take our time, amazing experiences can be created.
by Marissa Paulling, graduate student at the University of Washington
In the early part of the new millennium, things were not looking promising for the groundfish fishery of the West Coast. Multiple stocks had been designated overfished, and the Federal Government declared the fishery an economic disaster on Jan. 26, 2000. Too many participants were harvesting too few fish, and the future of sustainable employment for fishermen, many of whom came from coastal communities which depended on fishing, was in question.
> “I am excited to contribute to knowledge and research being done to address a local conservation challenge, and to support the fishing communities that make up so much of our West Coast fisheries. ”
— Marissa Paulling
To address the collapse of the groundfish fishery, catch limits for trips were created, vessel and permit buy-backs programs were created, and the trawl rockfish conservation area (RCA) closed several thousand square miles to bottom-contact gear. The Nature Conservancy played an active role in working with communities and agencies. TNC privately bought out trawl permits, which they later helped redistribute, and worked with fishermen to advance community access to the fishery while advancing technology for conservation use. Much of this work was focused along California’s Central Coast.
Photo: Marissa Paulling, graduate student at the University of Washington
In what many managers and environmentalists are touting as one of conservation’s greatest success stories, the trawl Rockfish Conservation Area (RCA) off the coasts of Oregon and California was reopened on January 1, 2020, as described by Amendment 28 to the West Coast groundfish fisheries management plan.
Spatial closures are a frequently utilized conservation measure, and a growing body of literature describes best practices for managing closed areas or various human behavior responses to closed areas. However, there is a gap in the literature that describes human response to reopened fisheries areas. The reopened trawl RCA provides an important learning opportunity for managers, partners, and fishermen.
Using Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) data, Christina Madonia, Patrick Dodd, and I collaborated with NOAA and TNC to map vessel tracks in response to the reopening of the trawl RCA as part of our graduate research. We wanted to see how fishermen and probable fishing behavior changed between 2015-2020. We were hopeful that the first five years of vessel tracks would inform us of “normal” fishing activity, and that 2020 would exhibit notable differences. We had two hypotheses: the first involved the extent to which fishermen would use these new areas. The second hypothesis was based on our expectation that 2020 would be a year of significantly different fishing behavior.
The year 2020 was a year unlike any other, and this was representative of our findings of fishing behavior off the West Coast. COVID-19 altered vessel willingness to take an observer. Markets were disrupted, and first receivers tackled Covid outbreaks at their landings. Therefore, only the first quarter of annual fishing data was analyzed. Additionally, we observed a change in ocean productivity, as proxied by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation Index (PDO) over the course of the analysis. But fishermen returned to the reopened RCA, nonetheless.
Of the changes we observed in reopened RCA use, there was a dramatic shift of fishing pressure shoreward. This demonstrates a departure from the trend that many fishermen follow, wherein flatfish and sablefish tend to be offshore in the winter months and migrate onshore during the summer months to spawn. Rockfishes tend to show more site fidelity, not normally engaging in these seasonal onshore-offshore migrations, but rather staying close to home.
The RCA was originally a tool designed to address the overfished status of several rockfish stocks. Six of the seven rockfish stocks that the trawl RCA protected have been rebuilt since the closure, and the last of the stocks is projected to be rebuilt decades ahead of the originally forecast. However, for conservation to be used the best way possible, and to prevent rebuilt stocks from declining, managers must continue with other programs and regulations in place, including a catch shares structure and observer coverage. The Nature Conservancy continues to work closely with several California partnerships to ensure that their livelihoods are sustainable and well managed.
As a student in the Levin Lab at the University of Washington, much of the student work incorporates applying conservation practices within partnerships between shareholders and The Nature Conservancy (TNC). Understanding the history and network that TNC has assisted in creating with fishermen, especially along California’s Central Coast, gives me a great sense of pride. Not only do I trust the seafood options available to me from this region, but as a student of the University of Washington (UW), and with prior field experience with groundfish, I understand the importance of the TNC-UW partnership in fostering conservation focused on the intersection of people and nature.
As a manager or supervisor, you want to do the job that you were hired to do: manage and supervise your team. To be able to accomplish this task you need an efficient team – not just an individual who is extremely competent but also a team of people who work well together as part of a group. Improving the efficiency of your group begins with standardizing processes, delegating tasks appropriately, and identifying areas where each member can improve their skill set to assist the team as a whole. But how should you go about doing those things? Here is a how-to guide.
Use Productivity Monitoring Software
To improve your team’s efficiency, each member of the team needs to be aware of how they are performing in relation to their coworkers. While most employees have a general idea of where they stand, using software surrounding employee productivity for monitoring individual productivity can give them more insight into how they’re doing and provide company leaders with information they need to make changes within the team.
Productivity monitoring software makes this easy by gathering data on when an employee logs in or out, when their computer is active during work hours, what programs are being used at specific times, and when employees take breaks throughout the day. This information is automatically compiled in an organized report that managers can use to identify which employees are working hardest during prime business hours, which ones log in early or stay later in order to get their work done, and which members of the team take long lunch breaks. It also helps managers identify employees who are working well during off-hours, perhaps dedicating those extra hours to completing important projects or staying up-to-date on company policies and procedures. The software can identify and flag unexplained changes in productivity as well as absences due to illness or vacation time. This information enables management teams to make smarter decisions about hiring new employees, firing underperforming ones, and adjusting incentives for the entire group.
Standardize Processes
No team can operate efficiently unless it is recognized that all members are following the same steps to get their work done. Creating standard procedures helps employees understand their role within the group and allows them to develop a routine that makes processes easier, faster, and more efficient. Once you have identified tasks that need to be completed, set standards for how they should be carried out in order to get the best possible results. Standardizing individual roles also ensures each member of your team has an opportunity to contribute what he or she does best every single day.
Delegate Tasks Appropriately
Only assigning tasks that are menial or repetitive reduces the efficiency of your entire team because it fails to utilize everyone’s talents. Dividing up duties based on individual strengths and weaknesses allows members of the team to excel in their areas of expertise.
For example, if you have one member of your team who is excellent at following up with clients on specific projects but struggles with creating marketing materials, assign those tasks that would benefit from client follow-up to them. After they complete these tasks for a set number of days or weeks, allow them the chance to work on creating promotional materials for a similar length of time. This system not only builds trust among employees because they feel as though they are getting the opportunity to prove themselves by taking on new challenges; it also maximizes productivity and efficiency by making sure each member’s talents are fully utilized every day while still working company goals and objectives.
Create a Reward System
Frequent breaks, fun team-building activities and clear, attainable company goals are all great ways to keep employees engaged in the work they’re doing together. With that being said, giving out rewards is an effective way to show your employees that you notice when they go above and beyond on a project or complete a task more quickly than others who have done it before them. Rewarding individual performance can also help motivate underachieving coworkers by making them realize how much better everyone performs when each person makes a conscious effort to do their part for the group.
Designate a specific number of days per month or week for rewarding different levels of productivity and use this time to acknowledge individual accomplishments while also encouraging the rest of the team to follow suit.
Minimize Distractions
While it’s important for your employees to take breaks every once in a while, allowing them too much time away from their desks can really slow them down and cause them to miss out on important deadlines or opportunities. If you have workers who are constantly on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter during business hours, establish guidelines for how long they can check those accounts and when doing so becomes unacceptable. By enforcing rules about tasks related to work that cannot be completed outside of the office, you allow employees some freedom without compromising efficiency by keeping distractions under control.
As the leader of a group, you have the power to influence collective efficiency in a positive or negative way. By creating standard operating procedures for how tasks are performed, delegating responsibilities based on individual strengths, and implementing an effective reward system, you not only improve your own organization’s efficiency but also create a positive environment where employees feel encouraged to move forward together.
The post Improve Your Team’s Efficiency At Work: A How-To Guide appeared first on Design your way.
