Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife 9/11/2023

Page 4 of 15 resilience to climate change. This project will design and implement an urban stream regreen campaign, working with individual property owners in riparian management zones to increase plantings. The initial phase will identify and survey properties and local stakeholders to ascertain the barriers, benefits, and motivators to adopting this practice, which will then inform the campaign's design elements. After the initial pilot is evaluated, a year 2 launch will work to increase reach and larger contiguous clusters (or regreen clusters) in areas where property owners initially took advantage of the pilot. Under the Land Development & Cover habitat implementation strategy to reduce barriers to infill and redevelopment in UGAs, there is a key opportunity in the Action Agenda to “improve the well-being of people living in high-growth areas by clearly defining needs for and increasing access to green spaces”. This project makes progress towards this outcome by increasing people's connection to nature, plants, trees, and water in their own backyards. Environmental justice priorities are addressed by targeting two specific basins within the city of Everett that have been shown to have the following combined environmental and demographic indicators: • High population density • High density of People of Color • Low median income • Little to no immediate access to a park or a trail • Prevalence of “heat islands” or areas with high impervious surfaces, coupled with a lack of tree canopy • Close proximity to heavy traffic roads which impact local air quality and other environmental health factors • Less than twenty percent tree canopy Given that this is a behavior change campaign, extensive time will be spent on outreach, surveys and stakeholder questionnaires to identify the barriers, challenges and opportunities this community (or audience) has to this specific behavior. Once these barriers are identified, social marketing principles will be engaged to design an incentivized approach that addresses, or all together removes, some of the possible barriers to action. By utilizing private property owners who live within riparian management zones, we hope to provide the first of many solutions that can start to make a difference to some of the environmental factors or disparities within North and Swamp creek - to take a step towards working collaboratively to build healthy, sustainable communities. GOALS & MEASURABLE OBJECTIVES The goal of this project is to incorporate social marketing principles to strategically address local stream water quality degradation and elevate the wellbeing of its residents living in high-growth areas by pinpointing opportunities where property owners can restore riparian areas. The key objective is to design a campaign that addresses the motivations and barriers this audience may have to implementing habitat protection on their property. Once the pilot campaign is executed, the effectiveness of the incentive-based pilot will be evaluated and then modified with the goal of increasing participation the following year. This secondary effort will enhance the campaign's reach by not only retaining previous successful campaign elements but amplifying the momentum from word-of-mouth and neighborhood visibility of the pilot campaign. This will improve the likelihood of contiguous tree canopy and vegetation along multiple, clustered properties in riparian areas of North and Swamp creek. The desired outputs for this campaign include: • A successful pilot campaign that identifies and addresses at least some of the barriers and motivators to property owners installing and planting trees on their properties. DocuSign Envelope ID: 7FA61F69-7F37-4B7B-8E00-24BAE208A655