3,082: that’s how many plants our land steward, Eric Owen, was charged with planting at Clear Lake Habitat Reserve this spring. The most amazing part: by the time you read this, Eric may have got them all in the ground … with a little help from several of the Conservancy’s friends. (That’s Eric in the photo, in a classic baby-trees-in-a-backpack selfie.)
This big planting is actually the latest chapter in a multi-year process that began with North Coast Land Conservancy acquiring the last un-conserved lake in the Warrenton peninsula in 2013. Then we set about rehabilitating a degraded upland area adjacent to the pristine lake by regrading it and turning it into a wetland. That project involved lots of heavy equipment followed by planting of several hundred trees and shrubs by staff and lots of volunteers. You can read about it in this 2016 post on our website.
Last year Eric and volunteer stewardship intern Emily Guderian added hundreds more plants to the wetlands thanks to a gift of surplus sedges from the national park’s native plant nursery at Fort Clatsop.
The area has begun filling in nicely with native plants and very few non-native weeds (always a potential problem).
But some native species are quicker to establish than others, so we’ve taken the opportunity this spring to add some diversity to the plant community out there by planting sedges in the wetlands and twinberry, ninebark, Nootka roses, and other native shrubs higher up, plus alder and spruce higher still to stabilize the slope. We know that the new wetland is a success because Eric has begun to see signs of beavers—the real expert wetland engineers—in the area, adding their own final touches.
Special thanks to all of our planting helpers:
Colin Meston of the US Forest Service (above)
Robbie Breece (at left)
And thanks to those who helped haul the plants from Tillamook to Warrenton: