It's a growing organization, and Heron Habitat Helpers co-leaders Heidi Carpine and Donna Kostka are quick to credit all of the volunteers in the group for the progress that's been made, both as a separate organization and formerly as a committee of the Friends of Discovery Park.
The two Magnolia residents especially point to Mary Hartnagel. As a Heron Habitat Helpers committee member, Hartnagel helped raise around $750,000 in the 1990s to buy more land from private owners in and around Kiwanis Ravine, home to a heron rookery in Magnolia near Discovery Park.
Hartnagel has since passed away, and the Heron Habitat Helpers has reserved a spot on the newly replanted Ohman Parcel for a viewpoint named in her honor.
Modesty aside, Kostka and Carpine themselves have become seemingly tireless advocates of the effort to preserve Kiwanis Ravine as the home of a colony of great blue herons.
Kostka, who retired after working 30 years for the National Park Service in the other Washington, was hesitant at first about joining the Heron Habitat Helpers, Carpine said.
"But then I got sucked in," smiled Kostka. "The herons do it to you." Now she's glad she did join the group.
"This is the most exciting project I've ever worked on."
Kostka, who specialized in outdoor recreation planning for the feds, brought a government insider's perspective to the Heron Habitat Helpers, according to Carpine.
"She knows all the process, which has been so helpful," Carpine said.
Carpine, a longtime community activist and a former president of the Magnolia Community Club, said the heron-advocacy group was originally a committee of the Friends of Discovery Park, which had already done a lot of legwork in the 1980s concerning the ravine. "Heidi and I, we were the two people named as co-leaders by the Friends of Discovery Park," Kostka said.
The Heron Habitat Helpers committee morphed into a separate organization when the group geared up to fight development plans at the site of a former nursing home on 36th Avenue West, Carpine said.
Heron Habitat Helpers members have spent considerable time restoring the ravine, but a lot of frontline action has taken place around such land-use issues as the nursing-home project.
The developer of the project on the nursing home site had proposed, but dropped, the idea of building an entrance to the project from a point near the Lake Washington Ship Canal, which would have wiped out a wildlife corridor at the north end of Kiwanis Ravine, Carpine noted.
More importantly, Kostka said, there was a danger that noise from construction work could cause the herons to abandon eggs or chicks during nesting season. The Heron Habitat Helpers prevailed in the end, though.
"All three developments that went in this year agreed not to work during nesting season," Carpine said.
The organization also got an unexpected boost from a developer working on a project on West Government Way. The plan for the mixed-use project was to include a rooftop garden to fulfill open space requirements.
But the Heron Habitat Helpers felt that noise from parties and barbecues on the roof might disturb the herons, Kostka said. "So we spoke up about it."
The city of Seattle Department of Design, Construction and Land Use listened, too.
But the permit called for the developer to use the money for the rooftop garden to fix up a median on Government Way, Kostka noted. The Heron Habitat Helpers felt the money should be spent on the ravine.
The permit also made no mention of curtailing construction activities during nesting season. "We appealed to a Hearing Examiner on those two points," Kostka added.
It turned out the developer agreed on the two points even before the hearing began, and the Heron Habitat Helpers saw $30,000 earmarked for the ravine, Kostka said.
The organization has also secured close to another $30,000 in matching grants for restoration work in the ravine, Carpine said, and it has applied for $86,000 in combined federal, state and local matching grants.
Kostka and Carpine both take the long view of restoring the ravine, but almost everything revolves around protecting the herons.
"When you think of the future, you want trees that herons will like," Carpine said of one example. Kostka pointed out that very little work had been done on the ravine from the time it was given to the city in the '50s. The goal is to get rid of invasive plants in the ravine and stabilize its slopes so that a natural forest can regenerate, she added.
"That's going to take years and years and years."
Staff reporter Russ Zabel can be reached at rzabel@nwlink.com.[[In-content Ad]]
