By Kelly Kingdon, AmeriCorps Member
On a sunny and clear day in January, PTMSC’s AmeriCorps Members hosted the 13th annual MLK Jr. Day of Service event. MLK Jr. Day is the only federal holiday designated as a National Day of Service. It is a great opportunity to go out and meet your neighbors and get involved. To serve both the community and the environment, PTMSC partnered once again with Fort Worden Historical State Park, Friends of Fort Worden, and the Olympic Chapter of the Native Plant Society to remove invasive European beachgrass.
European beachgrass (Ammophila arenaria) is native to Europe and northern Africa. It was introduced in the early 1900s to stabilize dunes along the west coast of the United States. Unfortunately, European beachgrass grows a little too well along the beaches of the west coast, crowding out native plant life. One important plant that has been impacted by the spread of European beachgrass is the yellow sand verbena, a short plant with yellow flowers that relies on shifting dune topography. Yellow sand verbena relies on disturbance from wind and waves to thrive. Without the shifting sands, yellow sand verbena would disappear.
The yellow sand verbena is the only host plant for a very rare species of moth, the sand-verbena moth. Adult moths feed on the nectar and pollinate flowers of the yellow sand verbena and females lay eggs directly on the flowers. Moth larvae burrow into the sand, emerging at night to feed on the plant. Yellow sand verbena is only found at 3 sites in Washington State, and Fort Worden is one of them! Clearing out the European beachgrass helps support both yellow sand-verbena and sand-verbena moth conservation.
With beautiful clear skies and (relatively) warm temperatures on our side, we had 68 volunteers out at Knapp Circle in Fort Worden Historical State Park. Together we pulled 2,860 pounds of invasive European beachgrass, as well as a few buckets worth of garbage in just three hours!
The Friends of Fort Worden volunteers as well as Washington Conservation Corps members will continue to go back to the site over the next year for subsequent removals, since non-native plant removal is rarely done quickly.
Check out the before and after!
Thank you to all the volunteers who made this Day of Service a success. Special thanks to our partners at Friends of Fort Worden, Olympic Chapter of the Washington Native Plant Society, Washington Service Corps, and Washington State Parks.
If you enjoyed getting outside and working together to remove non-native plants in Fort Worden State Park, you can join Friends of Fort Worden on some of their monthly work parties! Click here to learn more.