“Where Our Wild Things Are” Backyard Habitat Tour 2011: A Big Success

By Jennifer Rotermund, Habitat Steward

On July 9, 2011, Shoreline held its 2nd annual “Where Our Wild Things Are” (WOWTA) Backyard Habitat Tour. 

With six habitats to visit, educators providing learning opportunities at each habitat, perfect weather, and over 130 people from the community in attendance, the Tour was a huge success.

The WOWTA Team would like to extend a special thank you to the City of Shoreline for its support, with funding from one of the city’s environmental mini-grants, to each of the educators and businesses who enriched the tour by volunteering their time and resources, to Briarcrest Elementary School for allowing us to use their parking lot as the starting platform for the tour, and to the Briarcrest and Ridgecrest Neighborhoods for hosting this year’s tour. 

Also, we’d like to extend a special thanks to Dan Sullivan and Anne Weeks at Define Studio for assisting us with our fabulous website, as well as to the Shoreline Area News for your service in support of this tour in our community.

Of course, this tour would not even happen if it weren’t for the people of Shoreline and the surrounding communities taking time out of their day once a year to attend. 

Although we have not yet settled on the date for WOWTA 2012, we are happy to announce that there will be a tour next year, and we are already beginning our search for people willing and interested in having their property be on that tour.

The basic qualifications for having your backyard habitat be considered for a future WOWTA Tour are:

• Your property is located in Shoreline.
• The habitat is certified through the National Wildlife Federation and/or the WA Department of Fish and Wildlife. Here’s how to certify. 
• You use organic, pesticide-free gardening methods/ techniques.

To encourage a sustainable, low carbon footprint tour, and to give different Shoreline neighborhoods the opportunity to host the tour each year, we select habitats located closely together in adjacent neighborhoods. 

So, please contact us right away if you are interested in participating, as we will determine which neighborhoods participate based on the amount of interest we receive. 

To contact us about participation in a future WOWTA Tour, either post a message on our Facebook page  (you must be subscribed to Facebook to access) or send us an email.

Photos by Dagne Rueda