Ballard is home to one of the few original shorelines left in Seattle and Seattle Parks and Recreation has a great urban adventure to experience the wildlife right here at home.
Great blue heron watching in the Kiwanis Ravine.
The Salmon Bay Wildlife Corridor goes from the Golden Garden Bathhouse, to the Ballard Locks, across the ship canal to the Kiwanis Ravine, ending at Discovery Park.
From the Parks Department website:
Salmon Bay is a rich estuary where fresh water merges with salt water. Despite human intervention that has highly altered the estuary, Salmon Bay shelters a multitude of birds, mammals, and insects in addition to salmon and other fish.
Look around – you might see bald eagles and sea lions feasting on salmon, great blue herons stalking fish, and, if you look very closely, juvenile salmon hiding, feeding and growing in the shallow tidelands. Witness the waterfront web of life here at Salmon Bay.
To learn more about the Salmon Bay Wildlife Corridor, click here (.pdf).
These “natural” shorelines are anything but.
Unthinking, uncaring and selfish dog owners who allow their animals to run free make the “natural” concept a joke.
Bitter much?
Aren’t these “wildlife corridor” tours going to disturb the habitat of Ballard’s most treasured denizens: our drunks, crazies and bums?
An animal in a wildlife area, what a dumb concept. You must be a cat person.
Thanks for posting this. The tour now includes a beautiful sculpture celebrating the bay’s namesake wildlife at Salmon Bay Natural Area.
Sandy, the brochure doesn’t claim that any of the shoreline is pristinely natural, but there is valuable habitat for many species that is being preserved and enhanced.