To celebrate Earth Day NOAA Fisheries staff led the first NOAA Restoration Day on April 24, 2014, at NOAA’s Western Regional Campus (WRC) on the shores of Lake Washington in Seattle, WA.

The WRC is the largest NOAA facility outside of our headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, and includes five of NOAA’s six line offices.

Over seventy staff (including 25 from NOS) stepped away from their desks and rolled up their sleeves to remove non-native vegetation along two sections of the campus’ 3,600 feet of Lake Washington shoreline, which provides habitat for threatened Puget Sound Chinook salmon. Additionally, seven divers from the NOAA Dive Program collected submerged trash along NOAA's shoreline.

The event also enhanced our sense of stewardship at the workplace, helped to build community across the line offices, and made a hands-on contribution to NOAA’s mission to recover endangered species. NOAA Restoration Center received funding for this project from NOAA’s Preserve America Initiative Internal Funding Program and worked with the local non-profit EarthCorps to manage the event. A second NOAA Restoration Day will be held in the fall to plant the cleared areas.

For further information, contact Polly.Hicks@noaa.gov.

Go back to OR&R Weekly Report.