Wildlife Protection

Keeping It Simple: Easy Ways to Help Wildlife Along Roads

Letting nature take its course along a stream bank

When work began to reconnect a stream to an estuary on a Bainbridge Island wetland mitigation site, landscape architects from the Washington State Department of Transportation observed that plants along the newly-graded site were coming up on their own. So they abandoned their streambank revegetation plan, opting instead to remove invasive plants and noxious weeds and to plant new vegetation only when necessary. The "natural" plant communities grew quickly, covering the stream bank in only one growing season and just in time for the stream reconnection and the arrival of coho and chum salmon.

--Apr 25, 2003

Mark Maurer, (360) 705-7242 or maurerm@wsdot.wa.gov

Washington State DOT photo

Schel-Chelb Esturay

On Wetlands and Uplands - Washington