Even though North Olympic Land Trust’s 12th annual StreamFest is months away, planning already has begun.

 

  Early planning is especially important this year because the July 31 event is returning to its roots as an outreach and educational activity, said Colleen Teevin, the organization’s farmland conservation and development specialist.

 

She invited volunteers who want to attend StreamFest planning sessions, offer suggestions or be involved in other ways, to contact her for more information (See box).

 

The first planning meeting is Feb. 17.

 

“When the land trust and Friends of the Fields merged last spring, the number of outreach and fundraising activities increased greatly,” Teevin said. “We have been reassessing and restructuring our existing activities.

 

This year StreamFest will focus more on outreach and education than on fundraising. We would like area residents to share their ideas on how best to retain, add or alter existing StreamFest activities.”

 

StreamFest chairman Robbie Mantooth and her husband, Jim, have provided much of the leadership as well as the location for StreamFest since its beginning.

 

They said StreamFest began as an opportunity for people to see some of the local, natural qualities the land trust protects through guided tours of Ennis Creek, forests and agricultural areas on their Ennis Arbor Farm.

 

“Those activities, along with dozens of informational booths, the procession of species costume parade and presentations in the band shell Jim built, continue to be popular but we’re always open to new ideas,” Robbie Mantooth said.

 

The land trust has conserved special qualities of land on 2,295 acres since area residents established the nonprofit organization in 1990, Teevin said.

 

She said 2011 projects include:
• Farmland protection on 60 acres of Finn Hall Farm at Agnew
• Salmon and other wildlife habitat for the last two miles of Siebert Creek before it enters the strait
• Salmon and other wildlife habitat for 94 acres in the peninsula’s west end

• Collaborative conservation planning with other organizations and agencies as part of the Western Straits region.