Award honors hundreds of citizen scientists who search for Washington’s rarest plants

Volunteer Hally Swift, a UW Burke Museum employee, on the hunt for Barrett’s beardtongue (Penstemon barrettiae) in Klickitat County.

Each year, hundreds of volunteers spread across Washington’s forests and grasslands to look for the state’s rarest, most sensitive plant species. Many of these endangered populations live in remote valleys or along unseen slopes and haven’t been seen in a decade or more.

That’s where the University of Washington’s Rare Plant Care and Conservation program comes in. Its team of more than 200 volunteers fans out each summer to gather intel, one plant population at a time, on some 4,000 living in Washington state. In the program’s 15 years, about 1,000 of these plant groups have been paid a visit.

The program and its volunteer citizen scientists were honored this season by the U.S. Forest Service’s Regional Volunteer Award for Citizen Stewardship & Partnerships. The federal agency relies on the volunteer base to monitor rare plant populations that otherwise wouldn’t be watched over due to tight budgets and limited resources, said Wendy Gibble, manager of conservation education programs at UW Botanic Gardens.