Last week, a field full of graduates took their next step in life — by shedding metal cages, netting and plastic tubing.

More than two-dozen organizers and volunteers on March 31 removed several dozens of browse protectors covering thriving Garry Oak trees at the Sequim Prairie Oak/Prairie Restoration Project site, just north of Carrie Blake Community Park.

Longtime project organizer Bill Wood said volunteers over the years have dedicated more than 5,000 combined hours to help restore the native Garry Oak (Quercus garryana) to the Sequim prairie, helping replace trees cut down or leveled over the past 100-plus years to make way for farmland and pastures.

“The oak tree, in a good habitat, is a beautiful tree,” Wood said.

Last week, volunteers were busy removing equipment that protect wildlife — primarily deer and voles — from killing the relatively young trees. Helpers spent the morning cutting netting, removing metal tube frames, detaching PVC “collars” from the trees’ bases and carefully pulling rebar rods, the bases for the tubing, from the wet earth.

“I thought it was a good project, [that it had] good, long-range benefit for the community,” said Melissa Soares, a longtime project volunteer, in describing why she got involved.

“I love being outside; I love trees,” she said.

Garry Oaks have historically grown along the Pacific coast in a range extending from parts of Northern California through Oregon and Washington state, and into southern British Columbia. But Sequim-area oaks declined greatly as its population grew.

The Sequim Prairie Oak/Prairie Restoration Project kicked off in July of 2003 on 22 acres of property using Interagency Outdoor Commission acquired in November 2000. Purchase of the land, Wood said, was thanks to the foresight and efforts of biologist Anita McMillan and oak enthusiast Bob Steelquist. Wood, a retired Washington Dept. of Fish and Wildlife staffer (shellfish, salmon), has led the project since its early years.

The project, Wood said, is situated on the largest known prairie within the Dungeness River delta — about 1,800 acres in size, as estimated by general land office surveys conducted in the 1850s.

After initial work in July 2003 established an underground irrigation system, volunteers planted two-year-old native Sequim oak seedlings each fall in 2003, 2004 and 2005 — about 2,200 seedlings in all, Wood said, supplemented by acorns.

About 1,500 of the original planting has survived through 2023, he said.

Some now stand more than 6 feet tall, towering over the volunteers traversing the project field last week, while others, reaching a few inches off the ground, look dwarfed by their protective gear.

“The hardest thing,” Soares noted, “was keeping the deer off them.”

Wood said he saw similar oak plantings go awry when those trees were planted and the planters simply walked away.

“They died; I didn’t want that to happen [here],” Wood said.

“It was quite a bit of work [and] required some thinking,” he said.

The seedlings, he noted, are protected from deer browsing by a “browse protection” structure of the loops and netting, while protection of seedlings from girdling (chewing) by voles was accomplished using PVC tubing. Volunteers have also continually weeded and mowed the area to help stymie the vole population.

Project organizers in 2004 began irrigating, and volunteers cared for the seedlings each week during the annual growing season from mid-April through early September, until 2015.

Last spring, about 100 of the oaks, now defined as saplings, were judged tall and thick enough to remove the browse and vole protection devices, Wood noted.

Thanks to what Wood calls “excellent” conditions — a wet and cold spring and early summer — in 2022, another batch of saplings were ready to have their protective gear removed.

As the saplings continue to grow, he said, the gear removal may become an annual event.

The next stage for these Garry Oaks, estimated to happen in the next 10-20 years, is when they begin to produce acorns, Wood noted. An important important source of protein, fat and carbohydrates for birds, mammals and insects, acorns emerge just in time for fall bird migration and storing of essential nutrients for the winter.

Woods called the removal of the protective gear is the “final human effort” in caring for the trees.

“Henceforth they will be on their own, with nothing but sky between them and their ultimate maturity,” he wrote.

Sequim Gazette photo by Michael Dashiell / Bill Wood, center, demonstrates how to remove protective equipment from a tree at the Sequim Prairie Oak/Prairie Restoration Project site just north of Carrie Blake Park last week.

Sequim Gazette photo by Michael Dashiell Volunteers Elden Housinger and Melissa Soares help remove protective equipment from a Garry Oak tree at a restoration project site just north of Carrie Blake Park last week.