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Conservation District conducts clean-up near Bowerman Airport

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, July 15, 2026

By Jerry Knaak The Daily World

Jerry Knaak / The Daily World Breana Downs of the Grays Harbor Conservation District checks in volunteers for a clean-up event at the Grays Harbor Wildlife Refuge in Hoquiam.
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Jerry Knaak / The Daily World

Breana Downs of the Grays Harbor Conservation District checks in volunteers for a clean-up event at the Grays Harbor Wildlife Refuge in Hoquiam.

Jerry Knaak / The Daily World Breana Downs of the Grays Harbor Conservation District checks in volunteers for a clean-up event at the Grays Harbor Wildlife Refuge in Hoquiam.
Jerry Knaak / The Daily World Education specialist Cheyenne Autin tells volunteers about migratory shorebirds during the Grays Harbor Wildlife Refuge clean-up event.
Jerry Knaak / The Daily World A volunteer picks up trash along the access road to Bowerman Airport in Hoquiam.
Jerry Knaak / The Daily World A volunteer picks up trash along the edge of the Grays Harbor Wildlife Refuge.

On a mild, breezy Tuesday evening, the Grays Harbor Conservation District [GHCD] conducted it’s annual “Beach Clean-Up” along the access road to Bowerman Airport and the Grays Harbor National Wildlife Refuge in Hoquiam.

Nearly a dozen volunteers participated as the GHCD provided trash grabbers, bags, gloves, snacks and bottled water.

Breana Downs, the education outreach coordinator for the GHCD, and Louisiana-native Cheyenne Autin, an education coordinator on an AmeriCorps assignment, led the clean-up and provided area education, including information about migratory shorebirds, to the participants. Downs said that volunteers are critical to the GHCD’s efforts.

“We rely heavily on volunteers, we host volunteer events throughout the year. We have a five-person crew that does our conservation work on the ground, they implement all of our restoration work year-round, every day, they’re out there for 10 hours a day,” Downs said. “However, that only gets us so far, so we rely on our volunteers to help them with those projects, a lot of our volunteer events are going to those project sites and assisting our crews. We also do a bunch of events like these where we help out U.S. Fish (and Wildlife) and the Grays Harbor Wildlife Refuge, we rely on volunteers very heavily. They’re a big part of what we do.”

Downs said that volunteer interest in participating in events like this clean-up has increased in recent years and that many people participate in multiple events.

“It’s really picked up within the last three or four years, that’s really when our education outreach program has picked up and taken off,” Downs said. “We do get repeat volunteers, our volunteers are very enthusiastic, very engaged, really the lifeblood of the work the education outreach program does.”

After the volunteers spent the better part of an hour picking up trash and debris, the two-hour event concluded with a guided walk of the wildlife refuge led by Autin.

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