Will Earn Silver Awards, Scouting’s Highest Honor
When the going gets tough, call the Girl Scouts: Four scouts from troops in Olympia and Steilacoom are tackling the restoration of a critical but much-abused shoreline property the Land Trust recently acquired along the main stem of the Nisqually River, near Yelm.
The Girl Scouts and a team of volunteers will plant 500 plants on this acre of shoreline land, which has been torn up over the years by dirt bikes and off-road vehicles.
“These girls are incredibly ambitious,” said Courtney Murphy, the Land Trust’s Stewardship Assistant, who has been working with the Scouts for much of the last year. “They’ve worked hard – researched what kind of plant diversity they need, raised money to buy plants, salvaged plants from other sites, prepped the site. They’ve done it all.”
The four Scouts – Cassidy Chaney, from Steilacoom Troop 45261, and Maya Hanson and Maggie and Addie Barker, from Olympia Troop 40116 – are middle-school students and Girl Scout Cadettes. They’ll earn the Girl Scouting Silver Award for their project. It’s the highest honor a Cadette can receive.
In November and December, the Scouts and a team of volunteers will plant 500 plants on an acre of land that has been torn up over the years by dirt bikes and off-road vehicles. The property anchors one end of a ten-acre habitat block in the Nisqually River’s McKenna Reach that is salmon-rich but highly vulnerable.
In particular, the McKenna Reach contains spawning grounds used by Nisqually Chinook salmon and steelhead trout, both of which are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
A Silver Award project must demonstrate a Scout’s “understanding of sustainability and the wider world.” In addition to the restoration project, all four Scouts have completed the rigorous six-week Nisqually Stream Stewards class held by the Nisqually Indian Tribe and the Nisqually River Council.
