Leave the buffer: a shoreline note for midsummer work

Every few summers someone looks at Park Lake and sees a maintenance project: grass to the water, a cleaner view, fewer insects. That impulse is understandable and, on a wetlands pond this small, usually wrong.

A native buffer — cedar duff, rushes, skunk cabbage, willow, salmonberry — holds the bank, shades the shallows, and feeds the food web that supports kingfishers, herons, amphibians, and the insects swallows hunt at dusk. Mowing to the waterline is how a pond becomes a warm, weedy basin.

Pierce County critical-area and shoreline rules may also apply depending on the lot and the work. Before hiring a landscape crew to “clean up” the lake edge, read the Documents page, talk to the other owners, and if the work is more than hand-pulling ivy, ask the County. The thirteen did not inherit a swimming pool. They inherited a wetland.