Cascadia College ecology students teach about the importance of wetlands
BOTHELL — Knee-high boots sloshed through water and mud as a group of Cascadia College students led their families and friends through the North Creek wetlands.
After a term of learning about wetland ecology from Cascadia natural sciences professor Midori Sakura, the students stepped into the teacher role Wednesday, giving an educational tour of one of Washington’s largest and most complex floodplain restoration projects.
In the early 1900s, North Creek was channelized for logging, serving as a channel to float felled trees to Lake Washington. Later, the area was converted to agricultural fields, transforming a once ecologically diverse floodplain to crops fed by a system of ditches.
The state bought the land in 1993 from the Boone-Truly Ranch with plans of constructing Cascadia College and the University of Washington Bothell branch campus across the 127 acres. The campus design required environmental mitigation for some of the remaining wetlands that would be affected by construction, but instead of doing the bare minimum requirements, the state decided to restore 58 acres of the North Creek floodplain.
https://www.heraldnet.com/news/cascadia-college-ecology-students-teach-about-the-importance-of-wetlands/