Event kicks off Green Tacoma Partnership

Bringing TLC to Mckinley park Groups unite to tend Tacoma open spaces

The Cascade Land Conservancy, the state’s largest land conservancy and stewardship group, is coordinating an effort to conserve Tacoma’s open spaces.

The Green Tacoma Partnership brings together city and Metro Parks officials, the Pierce Conservation District, Tahoma Audubon Society and other environmental groups to preserve as many as 2,700 acres of parks and undeveloped land, officials said.

The relationship was celebrated Monday afternoon in a McKinley Park ceremony coordinated by the Seattle-based, five-county, nonprofit land trust.

The Cascade Land Conservancy already has received about $40,000 in city money to work with local stewardship groups and sort out Tacoma’s open space conservation needs, said Peter Huffman, who manages the city’s planning efforts.

Tacoma Mayor Bill Baarsma described the Monday event as “a demonstration of our city’s collective commitment to its communities, its natural areas, its neighborhoods and its quality of life.”

McKinley Park, across Interstate 5 from the Tacoma Dome, is a largely wooded, but long- neglected hillside expanse that once was a showpiece park. English ivy, an invasive plant, threatens to choke McKinley’s trees and strangle other ground-covering plants.

On Monday, the Cascade Land Conservancy coordinated a crew of volunteers to pull ivy and plant native species.

Based in part on the conservancy’s recent legwork, Huffman said city officials are now advertising for a consultant to create a scientifically based and community-oriented management plan for about 500 acres of city-owned open space.

Much of the property is steeply sloped and wooded, and includes parts of city ravines outside the Metro Parks system.

The city could spend up to $225,000 to hire a consultant to write the open space plan, a process that could take as long as two years, Huffman said. Proposals are due Tuesday. Officials expect the work to begin next year.

One of the goals is to streamline the stewardship process, which sometimes is bogged down by city permit requirements. The plan also would prioritize conservation needs, identify valuable habitat areas – plus properties that instead should be sold, and suggest new acquisitions, Huffman said.

It also could influence how Metro Parks oversees its parks. “We do fully anticipate that it will serve as a guide for some of the direction we’ll take,” said Nancy Johnson, Metro Parks spokeswoman.

As for the land conservancy, its involvement provides “a lot of good guidance,” said Anna Thurston, a Cascade Land Conservancy trustee who’s also South Sound chairwoman of the Washington Native Plant Society. “There are a lot of disparate environmental organizations in the Tacoma area and this helps us coalesce in one voice.”

A citywide open space management plan is long overdue and could alleviate unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles, said Scott Hansen, vice president of the Puget Creek Restoration Society.

For almost 10 years, Hansen has tried to create good salmon habitat in the North End ravine surrounding the creek. As for the Cascade Land Conservancy, Hansen said his group doesn’t need outside direction, but other stewardship groups lacking expertise might benefit from it.

Victoria Olson, a North End resident and a native plant consultant who has advocated for community-based open space management, said she resents Cascade Land Conservancy’s intrusion. “I think the people who live in Tacoma should be in charge of their own open space. I don’t think it should be managed by a regional organization like the Cascade Land Conservancy,” she said.