The Land Stewarship award recognizes the Friends' Hylebos Creek Conservation Initiative, an effort to preserve and restore 745 acres and 10 miles of Hylebos Creek.
The Friends of the Hylebos recently earned the Land Stewardship Award from the Cascade Land Conservancy.
The regional land trust bestowed the award on the Friends at its annual Conservation Awards breakfast May 1 at the Washington Trade and Convention Center.
"Receiving an award from Cascade
Land Conservancy is a tremendous honor and endorsement of our work conserving Hylebos Creek habitat," said Friends' Executive Director Chris Carrel.
The Land Stewardship Award is "for a conservation project that involves a unique or non-traditional collaboration between entities. This award celebrates the cooperation and persistence required to overcome obstacles and preserve land that is important to a community."
The award recognizes the Federal Way-based organization's Hylebos Creek Conservation Initiative, an effort to preserve and restore 745 acres and 10 miles of Hylebos Creek.
The Friends of the Hylebos and its partners have successfully preserved more than 425 acres of the Hylebos Initiative area and are actively restoring these lands.
With the help of more than 1,300 volunteers in the past eight years, the Friends has planted more than 80,000 trees in the urban Hylebos Watershed.
The Cascade Land Conservancy Award comes at a fitting time for the Friends, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary.
"The Land Stewardship Award and Hylebos Day are the culmination of the tremendous community effort over the last 25 years," said Friends of the Hylebos Board President Bob Roegner, a former Mayor of Auburn and King County official. "The citizens, businesses and governments of Federal Way, Milton, Fife and Edgewood have been working with us to protect the Hylebos Watershed and support a healthy environment in our urban area."
The Hylebos Watershed begins near downtown Federal Way and flows south through the cities of Milton, Edgewood, Fife and Tacoma. Historically one of the Central Puget Sound Region's most productive small salmon streams, the Hylebos still supports runs of Chinook, coho and chum salmon.
Friends of the Hylebos is a nonprofit conservation organization, founded in 1983 and working to protect and restore the environmental quality of Hylebos Creek, the West Hylebos Wetlands and the surrounding watershed.
More information about the Friends and volunteer opportunities can be found at the group's website www.hylebos.org, or by calling (253) 874-2005.
