The Vashon-Maury Island Land Trust is wrapping up its year with a host of improvements to trails and wild areas all over Vashon Island.

Visitors to the Fern Cove estuary now have a new parking lot and a safer walk to the treasured natural area. Frog Holler Forest may grow another five acres thanks to a recent land gift. And a generous trail easement from Keri Goodman means visitors on Maury Island could soon have an uninterrupted path through Dockton Park and Forest, the Maury Island Natural Area and Maury Island Marine Park — creating Vashon’s biggest uninterrupted public park area.

It’s been a busy year for the Land Trust — all this work is happening amid its search for a new executive director.

Founded three decades ago as a wildlife habitat conservation group, the Land Trust also builds and maintains official trails where there were none before. It has also branched into farmland preservation, such as at the historic Matsuda Farm – acquired by the Land Trust in 2015.

Much of the organization’s work involves replanting, reforesting, and pulling down derelict or hazardous structures, and educating homeowners to become good environmental stewards. Staff and conservation interns at the Land Trust maintain properties around Vashon and Maury islands; two work at Matsuda farm. Seven full-time staff work at the Land Trust.

The work isn’t cheap, but the organization doesn’t lack support: The group in July raised about $265,000 at its annual Big Sky fundraiser, breaking a record for that event. The Land Trust raised another roughly $20,600 in a single day on Nov. 28 from “Giving Tuesday,” an annual charitable event. Around two-thirds of the organization’s budget comes from individual donations.

Tahlequah Creek cleanup

At Tahlequah Creek on the island’s south side, crews are restoring native vegetation and protecting Vashon Highway from landslides.

The Land Trust bought ten acres of the ravine near the southern tip of the island about two years ago from the family of “Curly” Winebrenner, who passed away and wanted to entrust the area to the Land Trust.

“His hobby was concrete,” said Abel Eckhardt, Stewardship Director for the Land Trust. “He made these cool little forms that he would hold the slope with … these giant, concrete 90-degree forms, each one weighed probably 200 pounds.”

It was a neat homemade solution to erosion, but the Land Trust’s philosophy is to use native plants and other more natural methods to retain and restore the property — and that meant hauling about 100 tons of concrete out of the ravine and shipping it off-island.

“The concrete itself is not going to damage the environment in that state,” Eckhardt said. “But it’s just part of the cleanup.”

The Land Trust also hauled about 15 tons of debris and demolished Winebrenner’s old home, which sat right above the creek. Its proximity meant its septic system wasn’t ecologically acceptable, and such a house would never be permitted today, Eckhardt said. The site is being replanted and will eventually be reclaimed by nature, the Land Trust hopes.

“All of those elements that pose a risk to the creek are the reasons why we [decide], this is a house that we want to pull out, as opposed to repurposing or renting,” he said. “This one was kind of high up on there for removal. … Everything is dependent on these little watersheds.”

Land Trust crews planted close to 1,000 native plants this fall throughout the creek ravine, working to replace invasive plants like holly, blackberries and ivy. Those native plants will, in turn, provide habitat for the bugs on which salmon feed.

The next step, Eckhardt said, is planning for a project to decommission an old culvert and a driveway to Winebrenner’s house. Further planting will also help stabilize the area along the highway, which is vulnerable to landslides.

If the watershed continues to improve, the estuary could one day become habitat for endangered Chinook, but that is not a current focus for the Land Trust, conservation director Tom Dean said.

“The Tahlequah Watershed is one of the most intact on Vashon,” Dean said in an email. “Over the next five years, we hope to add many acres of healthy creekside and forest habitats to this new preserve.”

Fern Cove accessibility

Meanwhile, Fern Cove and the Shinglemill Creek Trail, near the northwest tip of the island, are more accessible now, thanks to new trail work by volunteers and Land Trust staff.

The area is part of the watershed for Shinglemill Creek, the island’s second-largest creek. Recent work by the Land Trust has improved a path from an upper parking lot near the Belle Baldwin house to the natural areas.

Visitors walk alongside a guardrail along SW Cedarhurst Road and have to cross the road to access Bill’s Trail or Shinglemill Trail. But it’s a short walk, shielded from traffic along the way.

Initially, the Land Trust wanted to expand the parking area near the green gate, Eckhardt said, which would improve parking capacity and allow visitors to exit facing forward into traffic instead of backing out into a tight curve in the road.

But due to the area’s proximity to a steep slope and the Shinglemill Creek buffer, their request was denied.

Instead, the Vashon Park District gave the Land Trust permission to build the new parking lot on their nearby uphill property, thus prompting the new trail work.

“The parking area is still within the buffer of the lower wetland as well as Baldwin creek, but it is at the very outside edge of each buffer,” Eckhardt said. “The project took a long time to accomplish and included a lot of project planning, wetland delineations, and interagency negotiations, but we got it accomplished.”

New park access is coming

On Maury Island, some of the island’s most beloved park spaces are about to connect.

Dockton Park and the Maury Island Natural Area and Marine Park are separated by a thin stretch of private property which will soon be filled thanks to a trail easement granted by property owner Keri Goodman, a frequent walker in Dockton forest, Dean said.

Easements are property rights that give people other than the property owner a right to use the land in some way. In this case, a trail easement will allow members of the public to use the private property between the parks for recreation — i.e., walking through it between the park properties.

Even though granting the easement was likely to devalue the property she intended to sell, Goodman granted it to the Land Trust, Dean said — a demonstration of her dedication to the dream.

“She wanted to leave a legacy here because she loved those trails so much, even though she wasn’t going to get to enjoy it,” Dean said.

The Land Trust has the easement now and will transfer it to King County on Dec. 20. After that, Dean said, work will begin to build the connecting trail.

Meanwhile, a five-acre parcel gift of forested land adjacent to Frog Holler Forest will come under the Land Trust’s care thanks to Jill and Murray Andrews, who donated the property.

Matsuda Farm revving up

At Matsuda Farm — once home to rolling fields of strawberries owned by the island’s Matsuda family — recent harvests have plucked tomatoes, peppers, chard and even decorative flowers from beds and greenhouses. Winter plantings include lettuce, broccoli, cilantro, parsley and other winter wish-list items from the school district. Bouquets of fresh-cut flowers are sent to the senior center or farmer’s market.

“We kind of have a standing order with the school district to do about 30 pounds of salad mix for their salad bar,” Farm Manager Ryan Jones said. “And pre-COVID, the school salad bar was like the hit of the island. People would just go to the high school, pay for a lunch and eat at the salad bar all week.”

Jones and Farm Coordinator Colie Southerland operate the regenerative farm.

The farm earned its first full growing season in 2019, but the pandemic threw a wrench in the program in 2020 and 2021, Jones said, and last year, the Land Trust pushed to not only grow more food for the district but also bring more students to the farm to work and learn.

Students need to complete 25 hours of community service to graduate, and volunteering at the Matsuda Farm can fulfill that requirement.

Growing now on the farm are herbs and veggies from the school district’s wishlist and more experimental crops. They’re seeding thousands of lettuce plants and seeing if other crops can handle the cold, wet PNW winter. And legwork now will help the farm thrive in a few years.

“All of these tubers were bought from the state of Washington, and I think half of them, I drove out and personally picked up,” said farm coordinator Colie Sutherland. “The tubers will multiply and throughout the years I won’t need to go anywhere – we’ll have them all on the island.”

All the high-minded benefits aside, it’s just better food than many students get.

“I grew up in Texas,” Jones said. “My school lunches consisted of square pizzas, Chick-fil-A sandwiches, a carton of milk and the chicken nugget rings.”

Looking ahead

The Land Trust helps maintain about 2,500 acres of county and park district land, and some private property. It also owns more than 300 acres of property outright, including the Christensen Pond and Shinglemill Creek natural areas and the Whispering Firs Bog.

“Thirty years ago, when we started, there were literally just logging roads and informal trails,” said Sarah Van Fleet, president of the Land Trust’s board of directors. “There were no public trails on the island. Now, there are more than 38 miles (of trails). That is no small thing, and of course, during COVID, it was a lifesaver.”

Vashon is special, Dean said, because so much of its land is conserved compared to the rest of the Puget Sound area. And it has an obvious role to play in the protection of aquatic life in the Puget Sound, carrying half of all of King County’s shorelines, Dean said.

Now, the Land Trust is looking at smaller properties, “connector” properties and buffer zones, Dean said, in addition to the shoreline protection work that “never goes away” and which will probably become more of a focus for the Land Trust over the next decade.

“We’ve definitely done a lot of work to get large tracts of land protected,” said Elizabeth Lunney, the Land Trust’s interim executive director.

Lunney joined the Land Trust as a consultant in January and is bridging the organization’s gap between executive directors. The organization is currently in a search for its next executive director.