Cultivating awareness, understanding, and stewardship of the Wenatchee River region
What is it like to spend childhood nestled in a landscape filled with sagebrush? Today, I’m sharing stories of two women who put pen-to-paper to say how growing up in Wenatchee’s shrub-steppe made a lasting impression as they were coming-of-age. Continue Reading →
Fireworks are a main cause of human-started wildfires in sagebrush county. Invasive grasses are putting sagebrush country at risk of severe wildfires. This vibrant ecosystem is vital for people and wildlife. We need to do our part to protect it, especially with fireworks this weekend. Watch and share this new video to learn what we need to do to stop the spread of invasive grasses and restore degraded sagebrush habitats. Continue Reading →
Plan to visit the CDLT Jacbson Preserve in the Wenatchee Foothills to experience a shrub-steppe ecosystem Continue Reading →
Plants are closely attuned to the places they live, their habitat. Plant species differ in their ecological amplitude to respond to changes to their habitat. They grow successfully in places within their tolerance levels for environmental factors such as cold, shade, or drought combined with abiotic factors such as soil type and geographic locale. In addition to usual fluctuations in the growing conditions habitat can be altered, at times dramatically, by disturbances such as fire or flood. Continue Reading →
Botanists call our region “The Wenatchee Mountains,” that has the highest concentration of endemic plants in Washington. 35 are state-classified as rare plants and 30 more are “just” endemics. Many rare plants are endemic, but not all endemics are rare! Continue Reading →
Right now, dozens of long-distant migrating songbirds are setting up shop in our shrubby canyons, leafy aspen groves, and riverside cottonwood forests. I invite you to visit one of these nearby habitats to hear and see colorful songbirds who have arrived from Mexico and Central America to nest and raise young in our valley. Continue Reading →
Herpetologist Torsten Watkins explains how to tell rattlesnakes and gopher snakes apart. Continue Reading →
Antelope bitterbrush is blooming in the Wenatchee Foothill’s shrub-steppe. Fragrant yellow blossoms cover each shrub. Rodents and ants cache seeds. Continue Reading →
The American goldfinch are small social resident songbirds active in our neighborhoods. Watch for the lemon yellow male with a black cap and groups of birds flying together, calling “potato chip.” Continue Reading →
When you drink Bird Friendly® certified coffee, you brew a more biodiverse, sustainable world. Using Smithsonian conservation science, the Bird Friendly gold standard does more than other eco-friendly seals to protect habitat, which is often destroyed to make way for coffee growing. Bird Friendly coffees come from farms using a combination of foliage cover, tree height and biodiversity to provide quality habitat for birds and other wildlife. Continue Reading →