The REI Loyalty Strategy Team took a day out of the office and came outside to join us in getting dirty and giving back to our public lands in early October. The REI volunteers joined the NFF, in an event hosted by Mountains to Sound Greenway Trustand the U.S. Forest Service to plant a pollinator garden on the portion of Snoqualmie Point Park on the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest . Volunteers worked a collective 175 hours to plant more than 200 shrubs and bushes and move over 50 yards of mulch to create habitat to help support important pollinators, such as honey bees, whose populations are in decline. 

This project is just one of many that REI is partnering with the NFF on to restore, enhance and steward National Forests across the country, through both volunteer activities and an investment of over $1,000,000. For more information on the REI/NFF partnership click here. 

Through projects like this one, the Forest Service and partners are taking steps to try to reverse the decline of pollinators by creating diverse habitat that attract and sustain these important species. An estimated 87.5 percent of the world’s flowering plant species are animal pollinated and 60 percent of crop plant species depend upon animal pollinators. This includes the majority of fruits, vegetables, and crops such as alfalfa used as livestock feed. 

Snoqualmie Point Park provides a panoramic, easily accessible view of the Snoqualmie Valley, Mount Si, and the Cascade Mountain Range north to Mount Baker. The 8-acre Snoqualmie Point Park site was acquired in 2000 through the cooperative efforts of the Trust for Public Lands, the U.S. Forest Service, and the City of Snoqualmie, with assistance from the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust.

LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR PARTNERSHIP WITH REI.