Conservation Events
| Omak restoration & preservation | Fish counts |
| Plant holding facility | Sportsman's Show trout pond |
| Adopt a park program | Wildlife management |
| Cedar River salmon docent | Habitat restoration |
Omak restoration & preservation
Following a major forest fire in eastern Washington in the 1960’s members of the Renton Fish & Game Club combined with other local Western Washington sportsmen donated their time and labor to help the Game Department rebuild several miles of deer fence burned during the fire. The fence prevented the deer from wandering onto the highway and being killed by cars. The fence also kept the deer out of the orchards thus preventing agricultural losses.
The success of this multi-weekend project lead to the formation of one of the longest running organized Sportsmen’s work parties in the United States. Since that time the local clubs in the Puget Sound area, lead by the Renton Fish & Game Club have made the annual journey to Omak Washington every Memorial weekend to donate time, labor and sometimes ingenuity to one of several State & Federal agencies. The primary agencies that we have worked with include the Dept. of Fish and Wildlife (Game Dept.), the Forest Service, the Dept. of Natural Resources, Dept. of Ecology, local private land owners, cattlemen and ranchers.
Projects have included building deer fences, fencing springs and streams and small lakes and ponds, building Chucker guzzlers, build and repair campgrounds, and pruning and fertilizing experimental Bitter brush plots. Other projects have included cleaning up of Dept. of Fish & Wildlife properties, cutting poles for fence repairs, thinning timber, building cattle control fences. Click the line for information about the 2004 Memorial weekend Omak Work Party.
In 1996 Renton Fish & Game Club established a Native Plant Holding Facility in part with a grant from King County Surface Water Management. This facility is used as a place to hold, grow and care for salvaged native plants. Plants find their way to our facility in several ways.
Members salvage plants from our 40 acres when doing grounds maintenance. These were plants that used to be chopped down or ripped from the ground. We now carefully dig the plant, place in a pot and relocate it to the holding facility. We also take cutting’s and seeds from various plants and grow them in our facility. We also purchase several hundred bare root plants from the King Conservation District.
Healthy native plants are then donated to local groups for use in habitat restoration projects. Expertise in native plant landscaping, restoration, identification and propagation is also provided on an as available basis. To date, Renton Fish & Game Club has donated over four hundred plants since the facility was established.
Adopt a park program - Cavanaugh Pond
In 1997 Renton Fish & Game Club adopted the King county park Cavanaugh Pond located next to the Cedar River 4 miles east of downtown Renton. Club members’ duties include monthly monitoring of staff/crest gauges and ground water wells. We measure the water level, record it in an annual report and submit the data once a year to KC Parks. Other activities include wildlife surveys, salmon counts, spring amphibian egg mass counts, trail maintenance, litter pickups and reporting vandalism to the County. Several club members also are available to lead nature and wildlife tours at the pond. Several hundred people have attended club lead tours in the past few years. One of the best tours is when the Sockeye salmon are spawning. During the peak of the run several hundred salmon can be viewed spawning in the pond, often within a few feet. This tour is great for kids and families. The walk to the pond is about 200 yards from the parking lot on fairly level marked bark trails.
Wildlife commonly seen using the pond are Red tailed hawks, Bald eagles, Black tail deer, beaver, muskrat, otter, and coyote. Several dozen bird species live around and use the pond. Waterfowl use the pond as a stop over site on their migratory journeys. Several duck species and Canadian geese use the pond to nest and raise young. Native amphibians use the pond to breed every spring. These include the Red Legged Frog, the Chorus frog, the Northwest salamander and the Long-toed salamander. Other species have been recorded from time to time.
Several club members are currently Cedar River Salmon Docents. As docents we volunteer to lead citizens groups on tours of salmon spawning grounds in the Cedar River watershed. On these tours we educate the visitors about the natural environment in which the salmon live. How the salmon need clean, cold, moving water to spawn in. These areas must also not be scoured out during periods of flooding on the river. Another condition of successful spawning is gravel beds that do not become covered in silt. Silt is formed from erosion upstream of the beds. One way erosion is controlled is by maintaining stream side plant cover. This cover also provides shade and food for the salmon. Native plant species are the best plants to use for this cover.