East Fork Land Trust Volunteers
For twenty-three seasons, neighbors have walked these marshes with rakes, clipboards, and quiet conviction. We care for 1,840 acres of coastal wetland, uplands, and tideflat together — as volunteers, as stewards, as a community.
What we do
The East Fork is a small estuary but a busy one. Juvenile salmon rest here before heading to sea. Great blue herons nest in the spruce above the tideline. The marsh breathes twice a day, filtering runoff from farmland and roads further inland. None of this happens on its own anymore.
EFLTV is a volunteer-led organization. We have no paid executive, no glass-walled office, and no marketing budget. What we have is a weatherworn workshop, a donated flatbed, a good coffeemaker, and a roster of people who show up when it's raining sideways.
Invasive removal, native plantings, and erosion monitoring across twelve stretches of estuary bank.
Working with landowning families to retire ecologically sensitive parcels from future development.
A spring and fall program pairing local students with biologists, surveyors, and longtime volunteers.
From the field
Late autumn
The north flat had been quietly losing native cordgrass to an aggressive hybrid for nearly a decade. Over three Saturdays this fall, twenty-two volunteers cleared an acre and a half, bagging rhizomes for dry disposal. The heron came back the second weekend. We took that as approval.
Mid summer
After four years of patient conversation, the Henrikson family placed sixty-one acres of upland forest into permanent easement. The stand includes old western red cedar and feeds two unnamed creeks that empty into the East Fork. Thank you to the whole family, and to the volunteers who walked those property lines with them.
Early spring
Our annual juvenile salmon survey recorded 1,103 coho smolts moving through the weir this season — the strongest count since 2016. Cold, clear March water helps. So does everyone who spent six weekends wading in it.
Workdays are listed a season at a time on our programs page. No experience needed — we will put a tool in your hand and someone kind next to you. New engagements and partnerships considered through existing relationships.
See the season's workdays