(Editor: The 20th-year celebration on Sept. 13 of the Morse Wildlife Preserve in Graham included a history of the site presented by Tom Gulbadini. It's reprinted here.)
The first recorded ownership of the Morse Wildlife Preserve was in 1888, and the parcel served as grazing land. By the late 1950s, the 53 acres had had three owners. Lloyd Morse, who has a homestead in the area, then purchased it and protected the land carefully for 40 years. In 1994, Lloyd and Maxine Morse began looking for a way to continue this stewardship. After talking with the Tahoma Audubon Society and the Tahoma Land Conservancy, the Morses decided to deed the land to the Conservancy, now a part of the regional Forterra non-profit land trust. The preserve is managed by a small group of volunteers called the Morse Force, with significant help from the landowner, Forterra, and athe Tahoma Audubon Society. Over the past 20 years, we have developed long-range plans for budgeting, fund-raising and volunteer projects to carry out the objectives of the original gift: To enhance the wildlife and education values of the property over the long run. Hundreds of schoolchildren, university students and other groups have toured the property and used it as a living laboratory. Between April and October, the Preserve's Second Sundays programs GÇô one Sunday per month GÇô offers tours for the general public. We would like to re-establish a former outreach program that was initiated with a nearby elementary school, involving fifth-grade and first-grade students. The purpose is to form a bridge between the classroom and fieldwork in habitat restoration on the Preserve. Also, the preserve hosts biologists in the MAPS program, which captures and bands birds on the property to determine long-term trends in bird populations. This is a a very important environmental measuring rod for the region, and this site has the longest continuous use of any in the region. One of the major projects undertaken here is the uniquely designed observation tower that was completed in the year 2000 and has become an essential part of the educational programs on the site. Another structure that characterizes the preserve is the small cattle barn, which is a classic post-and-beam building from around 1910. We completed a major project to strengthen the structure, which had deteriorated for many decades. That allowed its use as a period-piece shelter for environmental education. Now additional work, including roof replacement, is badly needed. In 2010, the barn was accepted for listing on Washington's Historic Barn Register and later on the Pierce County historic structures register. A few years after the initial gift of 53 acres, we received a large donation and purchased an adjoining 45 acres just to the south of the first parcel. And the following year, we were granted 88 acres that had been Tacoma Public Utility land near the headwaters of Muck Creek. Finally, we later received another tract GÇô 50 acres that was the Morse family's homestead property, about five miles from the core properties. This brought the total acreage of the preserve to 238. For comparison, this is more than one-third the size of Point Defiance Park, about half the size of Northwest Trek, and considerably larger than all other parks ibn the county.
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