Hardy souls of all ages dig in ahead of Earth Day

SAM's The museum's first "Climate Day for Kids" was among a variety of activities drawing hundreds of volunteers to projects around Western Washington, pegged to Tuesday's 39th annual Earth Day observance.

ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Chances are you've never signed a petition with a muddy handprint, so you'll just have to take the word of Layla Markovich.

"It looks wet and muddy, but it ends up being fun," the 7-year-old from Beacon Hill said Saturday after she added her handprints — twice — to a roll of paper spread across a long table in Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park Pavilion.

Never mind that the "mud" was actually nontoxic brown paint, or that Layla can't discuss complex details of environmental issues. She knows that she likes walking along a beach, and organizers of Saturday's event said that's a key first step toward knowing the need to restore and protect Puget Sound.

The museum's first "Climate Day for Kids" was among a variety of activities drawing hundreds of volunteers to projects around Western Washington, pegged to Tuesday's 39th annual Earth Day observance. On shorelines, along waterways and in parks, people pulled weeds, planted plants and spread the word about working for a cleaner, safer environment.

At the Washington Park Arboretum, about 150 volunteers pulled invasive plants such as blackberry and ivy, put down cardboard to curtail weeds and repotted native ferns.

"We've got some pretty hardy souls out here. We had a hailstorm in the morning and a lot of them worked right through it," said Kristin Mitchell of the Student Conservation Association, which organized the arboretum project with the University of Washington Botanic Gardens and Seattle Parks and Recreation.

Volunteers worked to clean up and restore eight sites along Seattle's Duwamish River. And at near Marysville, about 75 people pulled Scotch broom and blackberry vines from former farmland on Union Slough that the Port of Everett has restored as a wetlands.

"We saw heron and eagles out here today," said Keeley O'Connell of People for Puget Sound. "This is a huge, huge bird habitat."

About 350 volunteers in the La Conner area worked to pull weeds, put down mulch and pick up litter. They were rewarded with a salmon lunch hosted by the Swinomish Tribe.

At the Olympic Sculpture Park, an afternoon sun break arrived just in time for the kids to walk down to the small beach on Elliott Bay that was restored and opened with the creation of the park last year.

Ron Hirschi, a biologist and children's-book author, dragged a nylon net through the water and pulled it up onto the beach to give the youngsters a look at some of the bay's inhabitants — in this case, mostly kelp plants with a few small shrimp, crab pincers and a half-inch-long greenling fish.

Brian Shinn, 9, of Seattle, who was appointed to jot down a list of the net's contents, said the little clump of salmon eggs was the coolest find.

"It's good for kids to get a sense of the critters in Puget Sound and how that connects to the whole world," said Brian's father, Scott Shinn. "It's important for kids to know they are part of that whole system."

A variety of activities for children at the park's pavilion taught them how shower-flow restrictors help save water, how magazine pages can be folded to create envelopes and how bicycles promote clean air.

The muddy-hand petition was sponsored by MudUp.org, a project of the Alliance for Puget Sound Shorelines, which has a goal of restoring 100 miles of Puget Sound shoreline by June next year.

Karen MacDonald of the Trust for Public Land, part of the alliance, said bringing children to the beach "helps set the seeds for the way they're going to grow up. When you talk to people about their 'special places,' most people will bring up things from their childhood."