Over the past 15 years Max Prinsen and his wife Erin Wojewodzki-Prinsen have been working to preserve the Shadow Lake Bog.

Saturday they will celebrate the work they’ve done and the work ahead with the 14th Annual Frog Frolic from 1-6 p.m. at the Shadow Lake Bog: Richter Interpretive Center, 21656 184th Ave. S.E., Renton.

“We’re having a big party,” Wojewodzki-Prinsen said. “We would love to have lots of people come out. We have lots of food and live music and we give tours of the upper bog.”

It began simply enough, explained Wojewodzki-Prinsen, in 1995 when the couple started purchasing land they wanted to preserve. Over the past 15 years they’ve purchased 14 parcels that totals nearly 95 acres around the bog.

In December 1999 they founded a non-profit, Save Habitat and Diversity of Wetlands, also known as SHADOW, when they realized their own financial resources were finite.

“We wanted to purchase as much as we could so we could protect as much as we could, so, we formed SHADOW… so we could apply for grants (and other resources),” Wojewodzki-Prinsen said. “We started out with one acre. So, it’s been a tremendous amount of work.”

SHADOW’s mission, according to the non-profit’s website, is to preserve the bog and other unique habitats within the Jenkins Creek Basin through education and preservation by ensuring its sustainability.

Shadow Lake Bog is recognized by the King County Council as a significant wetland and wildlife habitat for Southeast King County, according to SHADOW’s website.

The significance of the bog, as stated by King County Council, is that it is “an important wetland which functions as a natural deterrent to flooding by absorbing many times its weight in water,” that if “left wet and undisturbed plays a vital role in protecting the environment and serving as a wildlife habitat.”

Over the years, the bog had become a dumping ground, Wojewodzki-Prinsen explained, and they had found the dumping had created a lot of damage but they built a gate to keep people from towing vehicles to the more accessible and popular areas.

Wojewodzki-Prinsen said that teens would head to the area near the bog, use the cars to light bonfires, hundreds at a time would “go down and party.”

In addition, she said, the organization adopted two miles through the Adopt A Road program and hauled out a bus filled with trash as well as three cars, among other debris.

Another major project was the shoring up and renovation of the Richter Interpretive Center, which was built from reclaimed wood from The Boeing Co. some 50 years ago.

“We shored up the entire building,” Wojewodzki-Prinsen said. “We took out the old cement and poured a new foundation then re-used the old floor.”

They put in a classroom and an office, as well, and it has become a critical part of the organization’s efforts to educate and raise awareness.

Recently SHADOW has partnered with the Tahoma School District.

“We have a mentoring day where we bring in the AP science class and they study the bog,” Wojewodzki-Prinsen said. “Then they tutor and mentor the third day classes. We usually have about 200 kids out in one day. Since we’re on their curriculum they’re beginning to do this more and more.”

Walt Sklarzki, instructional technology coordinator for the school district who also taught science for a number of years, said the district began its partnership with SHADOW about a year ago.

“We developed an entire fourth grade sustainability unity — part of our sustainability thread from K-12 — and the main field experience is going to the bog,” Sklarzki said in an e-mail. “The unit includes the idea that stakeholders are the people that try to save areas like the bog. All 600 of our fourth graders, the teachers, and many parents visit the bog each fall to see this ‘local treasure.’”

This weekend’s Fall Frolic is another piece of SHADOW’s education efforts.

“We want to bring a lot of people in to enjoy the property,” Wojewodzki-Prinsen said. “It’s more of an awareness event.”

For more information log on to www.shadowhabitat.org.