Helping hands from Japan

MARYSVILLE – Yuriko Kosaka knelt in the grass and used her hands to spread mulch on top of a large burlap sack wrapped around the base of a shrub.

She mounded the mulch so it would catch water and hold it near the shrub’s roots.

Kosaka, 16, and 10 other middle- and high-school girls from Kanazawa City, Japan, had some sympathy for the plant. They constantly grabbed water bottles to beat the heat on Thursday.

The girls and a chaperone had volunteered to help mulch and water shrubs and trees along Grace Creek, a tributary of Allen Creek north of 84th Avenue NE.

Last year, the Adopt-A-Stream Foundation worked with the city, Grace Academy and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to relocate about 1,000 feet of the stream channel to help prevent flooding along the road and Grace Academy’s driveway at 8521 67th Ave. NE.

Last winter, the foundation and personnel from EarthCorps, a Seattle-based youth leadership organization that works on environmental projects, planted nearly 3,000 shrubs and trees.

“They’ve done an amazing amount of work,” Adopt-A-Stream Foundation ecologist C.K. Eidem said.

His group was happy to learn that up to 80 percent of the new vegetation survived, despite the dry summer. If the plants make it thisyear, they have a good chance of long-term survival, he said. And survival of the vegetation is critical to survival of the stream.

“I’d call it a work in progress,” Eidem said.

The eventual success of the stream relocation will be difficult to judge anytime soon, said Tom Murdoch, Adopt-A-Stream Foundation’s director. The plants will take 10 years to mature. In about five years, they will shade the creek, which will help keep the water cool for fish. Their leaves and debris will provide food for bugs, a prime food source for fish.

“It’s a good project,” Kosaka said through interpreter Fumiko Saito. “It’s good that we can make a change for the salmon to come back and live in this river. It’s good to have that big heart for nature itself.”

The volunteer effort by the Japanese visitors served two purposes. They helped contribute something during their two weeks in the United States, and they also learned about volunteering, which they described as “an American thing.”

The girls, who are staying with host families, came to America through the exchange program PeopleLink. Vicki Clark, a PeopleLink teacher and guide who lives in Lake Stevens, got to select the project.

“My daughter works with the salmon task force in Everett,” Clark said, explaining the choice.

The girls have spent several hours each weekday morning learning English. Their afternoons have been occupied by such things as a Seattle Mariners baseball game. They will return to Japan on Sunday.

In the stream project, the girls learned that the heavy clay soil along the stream makes it difficult for plants to grow. Work crews enhanced the soil by bringing in richer dirt when they planted the trees and shrubs. Foundation officials hope the girls will take the lessons they learned back to Japan to help maintain watersheds there, Murdoch said.

Kosaka dusted off her hands and gave a thumbs-up and a big smile. “Good project,” she said in English. “Good lessons.”

Reporter Cathy Logg: 425-339-3437 or logg@heraldnet.com.

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