The story keeps reverberating. Today's Everett Herald article by Noah Haglund makes 6 publications that have carried this story. It has now run in the:

Everett Herald
Seattle Times
Bothell Reporter
Woodinville Weekly
Kirkland Patch
Daily Journal of Commerce

We hope you enjoy Noah's latest addition. Just click on it to read.
What a year!

One of our goals is to provide education tools to teachers.

Our Education Committee is meeting with teachers tonight to begin the discussion about using the forest so students in future years will learn all about it. Feel free to share your suggestions. Curriculum development does not happen overnight so the more ideas we have the better will be the end product.

With only a few days left in 2011 we believe this will be our year end article. But who knows?

Thanks for your good wishes and support,
Friends of North Creek Forest






From the Everett Herald---------------->

We thought we might be finished with good news announcements for 2011. Not quite... Here comes another 6 acres.

Last spring Friends began a long and challenging application for a federally funded Land and Water grant. This grant is managed by the Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office. RCO staff answered our many anxious questions and, along with Bothell staff, guided us through to a completed application.

We gave our final presentation to an RCO panel in September and, as previously reported, received the second highest score in Washington.

Important: it was not the talent behind the application that won the grant. We barely knew what we were doing. It was the property itself that won. It is spectacular and only needed someone who would tell the story.

There was one catch. The grant we won needed to be funded by Congress. Three days after the City of Bothell completed the conservation of the first 35 acres the US Senate funded the Land and Water program on December 18th.

By Spring 2012 Bothell will be able to purchase another 6 acres of North Creek Forest, making a total of 41 acres of park land conserved through the actions of 2011. What a year!

What many don't realize... the Land and Water grant was in danger of the budget axe. A large segment of Congress does not think conservation is very important in these culturally inflicted hard times.

The Washington Wildlife and Recreation Coalition played a huge roll in getting Congress to end its stalemate over L&W funding. If you spend some time on their website you will be awed by the vitality of this organization. We can't imagine a Washington State without them. Please take a look:
http://wildliferecreation.org/

Finally, you might want to read these two editorial opinions in the Seattle Times.

We hope you have enjoyed these conservation adventures of 2011 with us. We share immense gratitude for all who have endorsed our goals, attended meetings and events, written letters, advised us, offered volunteered stewardship hours and offered your donations.

Thank You,
Friends of North Creek Forest

Hi Friends,

This article appeared in today's Times. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2017026406_bothellwoods16m.html
_
We are all grinning around here. From you emails it looks like it is contageous!

Friends of North Creek Forest

We are grateful to announce Bothell now owns 35 acres of North Creek Forest. The deal was completed at 2:00 PM today. Please see Bothell's press release HERE.

This phase of conservation started 10 years ago when a group called Help Our Woods sought to save the forest. Many of Friends founding members were associated with HOW. They raised the funding for wildlife and wetland studies that have been very important for getting the first King County Conservation Futures grant 2 years ago. Matching funds for that grant could not be sustained with the recession.

In 2010 one family (Robinson) purchased 6 acres in the center of the forest. That energized many of us. A gift of $3000 from one of our members enabled us to hire Woody Wheeler, a conservation consultant (see Conservation Catalyst). After several meetings we decided to pursue a new direction and strategy. Friends of North Creek Forest grew out of HOW and had it's first official meeting on February 23, 2011.

In two months we assembled our promotional materials, web site and other infrastructure, obtained key endorsements and applied for a Snohomish County Futures grant. We only had 5 days between learning of the grant and the deadline for application. We worked hard on it, pausing only to ask the Bothell City Council for permission to make the application. By the end of April we won $200,000. The forest also attracted the attention of Representative Derek Stanford and six days after winning the Snohomish grant we won another $200,000 for the Department of Commerce.

We learned that North Creek Forests sells itself. It is so worthy of conservation we only needed to tell the story. This was clearly evident when we won another $109,000 from the federally funded Land and Water grant in September. Assuming Congress funds Land and Water in their next budget, the city will be able to purchase 6 more acres next summer. Time after time the City Council voted to support us and we dove into the work along with city staff and we won the money. This is an exciting and compelling effort. In the words of Bill Evans, Bothell City Council, "In 34 years of public service I have never seen any group go so far so fast". It is the forest. It does sell itself. We just say what is there.

The grant work has not been our only job. The University of Washington Restoration Ecology Network has begun work on the Robinson property. Lessons learned over the winter and spring can be applied elsewhere in the forest now that Bothell owns a big part of it. Support for this work is one of our commitments. Outreach and education are other key activities. Our goal is to support educators with material resources so they can use the forest as a teaching tool.

Sorry about these dark photos: This panorama is of the northern half of North Creek Forest, approximately the part Bothell just purchased. It is about 5/8 of a mile long and 1300 feet deep at the widest part with a 300' elevation gain.

Below it lies I-405, North Creek and the business park.

The next photo is of the remaining 29 acres. Assuming our L&W grant is funded we will still have 3 parcels of forest to acquire. In each case we have to find a solution that works for landowners, Bothell and all other interests.

_We are going to take some time off to "decompress" over the Holidays. We hope to pose a possible solution for the remaining conservation early in 2012.

The Bothell Reporter article is HERE.

A Daily Journal of Commerce article was published today which you may like to read. (see article)

Seattle Times and Everett Herald photographers and reporters spent almost two hours with us yesterday. You should see those articles soon.

Warmest Wishes,
Friends of North Creek Forest

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