Blaine’s California Creek Estuary Park has a new addition: 12 acres of land for habitat preservation and recreation in waters vital for salmon and migratory bird populations.
The addition, sold to the Blaine-Birch Bay Park and Recreation District 2 by the Whatcom Land Trust (WLT), will help protect roughly 900 feet of saltwater shoreline on Drayton Harbor and 1,800 feet of freshwater shoreline along California Creek.
The California Creek Estuary is pretty unique in the region, WLT Conservation Director Alex Jeffers said.
“The estuaries are a pretty unique and valuable habitat here in Whatcom County,” he said in early March. “The area has a lot of ecological importance for migratory shorebirds, salmon and forage fish, and within Drayton Harbor, there’s an important area for shellfish harvesting.”
The California Creek Estuary and the neighboring Dakota Creek Estuary are vital for salmon populations, which use the creeks and side channels to migrate back to open water. Coho, steelhead and bull trout frequent the waters. Historically, the waters were popular for chinook salmon, too, though they haven’t been seen in the creeks recently.
The mud flats along Drayton Harbor are essential for migratory shorebirds, who stop and feed on their way through the area.
The land trust has been eyeing the California Creek Estuary area for about a decade, Jeffers said, for conservation and restoration projects. The group purchased its first land parcel in 2017 for habitat rehabilitation and has sold several parcels to the park district for additional protection and recreation.
With the new addition, the parks and recreation district will add a picnic area, a kayak launch and a three-quarter-mile loop trail.
“Blaine-Birch Bay Park District appreciates the partnership with Whatcom Land Trust in order to acquire properties like this,” Ted Morris, the capital projects specialist with the park district, announced in a release about the acquisition.
