If you are visiting Fort Worden and look up to see someone swinging through the trees, don’t be alarmed: They are there to help.

The Friends of Fort Worden will be in the park multiple times over the year to pull down invasive plants that, left to their own devices, are choking the red cedars, Douglas firs and madrone. 

“Over the last two years, our volunteers have removed 50 tons of scotch broom, English Ivy and invasive beach grass from the park,” said trail team leader Will Barrett. “But we hadn’t even touched some of the most endangered areas, which are steep slopes with tall trees.”

It also represents the hardest work yet. Heavy machinery can’t be used there, and the slopes are too steep to walk up. 

The trees anchoring the slopes are being swarmed by ivy, which can add enough weight to topple the trees during storms. And without the trees, the slopes can collapse.

So the Friends worked with state and local park management to find a team that had already done this kind of work in parks in Washington. The steep slope specialists rappel down through the trees, removing invasive plants as they go.

Invasive species have already been cleared by volunteers elsewhere in the park. The final phase of the habitat restoration plan, which will begin later this year, includes placing thousands of native plants in those areas.

The steep slope specialists, and the new native plants, are being paid for by the Friends of Fort Worden, an all-volunteer group that provides both financial and boots-on-the-ground support for park improvements and programs not funded by the state parks system.

Jon Hall is a volunteer for the Friends of Fort Worden and a resident of Port Townsend.