More than 60 volunteers gathered at Roy City Park with gloves and boots Sunday, Sept. 29, to help kickstart the City of Roy’s goal of restoring Muck Creek.
The creek, which runs through the Nisqually River, is filled with invasive canary grass when it dries up during the spring and summer months, and the chum salmon and steelhead populations haven’t been seen in the stream in three to five years.
“We’re coming up on a point where they’re going to start to forget home,” Roy Mayor Kimber Ivy said of the native fish populations. “We’re doing our best to speed up the pace as fast as we can to get them back.”
The city organized the event with the help of Bethel School District (BSD) to first remove the canary grass, which will improve water flow, restore native vegetation and create a better environment for salmon populations to thrive. Volunteers, joined by Ivy, Councilor Edmund Dunn and City Clerk-Treasurer Beth King, took several heaping rolls of grass out of the creek before the day was complete.
Fifty-five Roy Elementary fifth graders first pulled the grass from the stream on Wednesday, Sept. 25.
They were joined by Principal Denise Watson, BSD Superintendent Dr. Brian Lowney and several other staff members. Rachael Bartell-Barger, BSD Title VI Native American teacher on special assignment, said Wednesday’s field trip was a positive experience for the students.
“It was a great experience for our school district bridging that gap and building community with our tribal partners and helping our Native kids see that this matters and creates their sense of belonging in our schools,” she said.
Bartell-Barger said the process for beginning the restoration project has taken about six months, as BSD has partnered with the City of Roy and the Nisqually Tribe on the efforts. They received a grant from E3 Washington, Washington’s professional association for environmental educators, to purchase tools and supplies for students.
Ivy said the restoration project is an opportunity not only to bring fish populations back to their habitats, but it will strengthen the relationship between the City of Roy and the Nisqually Tribe. They, along with BSD, are working together to secure permits to pull other invasive plant species from the creek in the future.
“I think this is a huge step into bringing the community together with the Nisqually Tribe and the history of this land and bringing the salmon back and preserving what once was here and being good stewards,” she said.
Bartell-Barger recalls a time when students would walk down to the creek after school to see the salmon swimming “bank to bank.” She said Muck Creek could look like that again “sooner than you might think” with federal and local funding for tribal hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest.
“It was nuts to see that many fish in here. Now you hardly see water in here at all. There wasn’t grass in the creek when I was a kid, not like it is now,” she said. “Kids used to swim in here when we were younger and hang out and play at the park, but you don’t see kids swimming in the creek anymore.”
Local ties to the waterway run deep as residents recall when they would fish in the creek from the bridge and cook their catch on a stove that was once located where the gazebo is now. Kids used to jump from a diving board into the creek, as well.
While there is still plenty of work to be done to help Muck Creek return to its heyday, Bartell-Barger is optimistic that the Roy community can work together to complete the project.
“I think that a huge labor of love goes into work like this. These people clearly care about this little town of Roy,” she said. “Sometimes the smallest towns can make the biggest impacts, and that’s what I’m hopeful for.”
