Indian Island stewardship season needs you

||| FROM RUSSEL BARSH for KWIAHT |||

Community stewardship of Indian Island is 18 years old and still growing! This one-acre preserve a few hundred feet from Main Street is a unique part of the San Juan Islands National Monument that has a locally staffed and funded program of research, wildlife monitoring, and public interpretation, organized by the nonprofit conservation laboratory Kwiaht. (Keepers of the Patos Light is the only other nonprofit stewardship program in the Monument; Monument staff recruit and coordinate volunteers on Lopez and San Juan Island.)

Since 2009, Kwiaht researchers and Orcas volunteers have spent nearly a thousand days at Indian Island; identified and counted more than 100,000 fish and sea stars; and spoke with some 30,000 visitors to the island’s beaches and tide pools. Research at Indian Island has identified a number of changes that reflect warming and increasingly energetic seas, as well as direct human impacts: one of the longest-running and granular studies of an intertidal ecosystem in our region.

And while some of the findings are distressing, such as recent declines in eelgrass density and crab diversity, others have been more hopeful: in particular, the rapid rebound of Ochre Stars after the 2014-2015 Seastar Wasting epidemic.

Another positive sign has been the recovery of camas, chocolate lilies, and other wildflowers on the vegetated crown of Indian Island as a result of trail work, seasonal tail closures, and weed control by Kwiaht’s stewardship team and local youth. Even “Ladies’ Tresses” orchids have been blooming along the Driftwood Trail in recent years. This requires vigilance and frequent action, however; for example, when an infestation of weedy Bur Chervil was discovered in April, and cut back before it could seed out.

Kwiaht’s Indian Island program relies on local donations through annual Orcas Island Community Foundation GiveOrcas campaigns, including this year’s May 12-21 spring campaign. Donations as well as new volunteer docents are always welcome, and you can visit and see the results!