Whatcom Land Trust and Community Partners Protect Land

by Lorraine Wilde

While celebrating its 40th Anniversary conserving land in Whatcom County, Whatcom Land Trust (the Trust) partnered this past October with Whatcom Transportation Authority (WTA) and Whatcom Million Trees Project to protect 51 additional acres at Kelsey Nature Reserve along Lake Terrell.

These forested and open wetlands, that include a section of salmon-bearing Butler Creek, provide critical habitat for a variety of wildlife. The new land acquisition connects the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Lake Terrell Wildlife Management area with an existing Trust property, the Ruth Kelsey Nature Reserve (Kelsey), in Ferndale.

This land was strategically chosen to grow a fish and wildlife corridor that connects the 1,200 protected acres of Lake Terrell with now a total of 71 acres of open and forested wetlands that surround a section of Butler Creek known to be used as spawning grounds by the Federally Threatened coho salmon.

“The properties were close to being connected. But now they’re officially connected as one big, continuous wildlife corridor,” explains Trust Conservation Director and Interim Executive Director Alex Jeffers.

Together, this partnership results in more environmental benefit than either could have achieved individually — including further offsetting some of WTA’s bus transit carbon emissions.

Partnerships Achieve Multiple Goals

This land purchase was just one small part of WTA’s long-term decarbonization strategy. “A major task for us is transitioning the bus fleet to all zero-emission technology, like electricity or hydrogen, by 2040,” explains WTA’s General Manager Les Reardanz. “We are actively pursuing zero emissions, but that transition will take a while because it’s a community effort. So we’re looking for really innovative ways to help us all reach that goal of decreasing our carbon footprint in ways that benefit us here locally right now.”

For example, while WTA is transitioning toward fully electric buses gradually, they still have many hybrid buses that will be in use for years while not being zero emission. “If we use renewable fuel in our hybrid buses, that makes them have the equivalent carbon footprint of an electric bus. But the way the electrical grid is set up right now, Puget Sound Energy isn’t able to offer all renewable fuel from renewable sources yet. So some of the electricity going into our hybrid buses still comes from things like coal and other non-renewables. We can only move as fast as we can together. So, instead of just waiting, we’re innovating.”

Because trees sequester carbon, that innovation meant investing in trees, and therefore, land. “WTA was looking for conservation projects they could invest in locally, rather than just sort of paying money into a carbon credit program where the money goes somewhere and then you never see it again,” remembers Jeff ers. “They wanted to have those benefi ts stay as local as possible, so they provided $150,000 of funding towards the $600,000 purchase price. We often work to combine funding sources to purchase conservation properties, but this was our fi rst with WTA.”

WTA’s successful Transit for Trees program in fall 2023 enabled the purchase of young tree and shrub seedlings to be planted by another community partner, Whatcom Million Trees. “We were looking for additional creative, innovative solutions to continue to decarbonize,” remembers Reardanz. “Whatcom Million Trees helped us determine and calculate just how much preserving older forests would contribute to decreasing our carbon footprint in the years ahead.”

A Carbon Sequestration Report (August 21, 2024) prepared by Whatcom Million Trees Project, and based on calculations by Samyak Shah of ClimateSum, estimates that a 37-acre forest (part of the total 51 acres added to the reserve) holds signifi cant sequestered carbon — currently approximately 10,212 metric tons. “If the property was timber harvested or converted to other land uses, a signifi cant portion of this carbon would be re-released to the atmosphere. Through the year 2075, this property (protected) will sequester an estimated 5,106 additional metric tons of carbon — approximately 100 tons per year, on average, over the next 50 years.”

Planting 1,000 new conifers at the property would sequester 50- 80 additional tons of carbon per year, on average, over 50 years.

Not only will the protected trees and newly planted trees continue to sequester carbon by pulling carbon dioxide from the air, they will also provide a wide range of ecological benefi ts to the local community.

Stewarding Ecological Values

The original 20-acre Ruth Kelsey Nature Reserve was the second property ever to be donated to the Trust. Originally a farmstead, Ruth purchased it in 1968. An art teacher, Ruth used the land as a way to escape from busy city life. In 1992, she donated the property to the Trust. Its transformation has been a gradual labor of love for Trust staff and volunteers, one partner and one project at a time.

Janet Murray — one of more than 120 volunteer land stewards that assist the Trust in monitoring and caring for conservation properties — has stewarded the original Kelsey property over the past 12 years. After taking a stewardship course hosted by the Washington Native Plant Society, Murray applied for and received a grant to remove reed canary grass and restore a vernal pool on the property. A lot of hours and sweat were involved.

In 2018, the Trust was awarded a grant from the American Forests Global ReLeaf program, in partnership with the Alcoa Foundation, to complete an acre of habitat restoration at the Reserve. Th e grant funded the planting of 700 hundred trees on a one-acre stretch along Butler Creek. Kelley Insurance donated an additional 200 trees to be planted on an additional quarter-acre of land. Their staff helped put them all in the ground over a series of three work parties. In 2019, the same grant was awarded to plant even more trees, along with a separate grant from the Alcoa Foundation that funded restoration work on Trust properties along the Lower Middle Fork of the Nooksack River.

Kelsey is filled with life. Wood duck boxes and bat boxes are often occupied. Beavers have come and gone over the years, but a new dam along Butler Creek was built around 2017. The property has also been used for service learning projects by local students, representing the next generation in hands-on conservation work.

Land Steward Murray is excited that the habitat restoration work at the original Kelsey Reserve will now extend into the new property creating a continuous wildlife corridor with Lake Terrell. “The most exciting part of this whole thing for me is that now we have a good chunk of Butler Creek, the part of the creek where there might be spawning happening,” explains Murray.

Murray has already observed a salmon redd, or nest dug by female salmon in the streambed to incubate their eggs, on the new property. “I know for a fact there’s baby fish in there, so there’s somebody spawning.”

Next steps for the Trust will be to survey the property and develop additional long-term conservation plans. That will include mapping the existing plant species, including nonnative invasive species. Lake Terrell has several known invasive species, including aquatic plants.

Murray noted that some invasives have already been spotted, including yellow iris, English hawthorn, and the usual suspects—reed canary grass, morning glory, Himalayan blackberry, and holly.

“We also have deer, salamanders more than once, lots of frogs and amphibians,” notes Murray. “[North Cascades] Audubon has people who do surveys out there, and one of the people who used to do the surveys all the time said she had, I think, 22 species of birds. Th ere’s probably porcupine, certainly coyotes.”

Although public access will be considered during long-term planning, right now, there is no infrastructure to support public access.

Better Together

“By partnering on this project, a first of its kind for WTA, we are leveraging each other’s strengths to help the environment across the board, while preserving these values into the future together. The impact will be greater together than anything we could have accomplished individually,” said Reardanz. “This project gave us, as a local agency, the opportunity to invest in local nonprofits through local partnerships, in turn preserving land locally and benefiting the local environment, right here in Whatcom County.”

For over 40 years, Whatcom Land Trust has worked to protect and care for Whatcom County for future generations. Keep an eye out for future community collaborations that will ensure healthy forests, climate resilience and outdoor access opportunities now and forever.

To contribute to support more conservation wins like Kelsey Nature Reserve, in our community, Visit whatcomlandtrust.org/

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Lorraine Wilde, owner of the public relations company Wilde World Communications, has lived in Whatcom County for more than 30 years. She has published more than hundreds of articles and blogs. Lorraine earned her M.S. in Environmental Science from Western Washington University and cares deeply about this place she calls home.