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ALEX
PAJUNAS — The Daily Astorian
Ian Sinks, the stewardship manager
for Columbia Land Trust, looks
over a mud-caked map to assess
the progress of a 105-acre tidal
channel restoration project
within the land trust’s
Walluski River property Tuesday.
A dual-rotor Boeing 107 helicopter
was brought in to help place
52 large logs. |
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ALEX
PAJUNAS — The Daily Astorian
Mila Carey-Bracke, of the Columbia
Land Trust, lugs her boot out
of the thick mud along the banks
of a Walluski River tidal channel
Tuesday while clamping a log
in place to keep it from being
carried away by high tides. |
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Scroll
down to see video.
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Recycling
for habitat restoration
Columbia
Land Trust works to restore historic Walluski
River flows, bringing the area back to pre-1900s
condition
By
CASSANDRA PROFITA
The
Daily Astorian
The
thrum of a Boeing 107 helicopter and the belching
of boots in waterlogged mud were the sounds
of a habitat restoration project on Astoria's
Walluski River this week.
On Tuesday, workers with the nonprofit Columbia
Land Trust stood in the muck surrounding a recently
restored tidal channel as 52 donated logs leftover
from the December storms were airlifted into
the waterway.
After each delivery via chopper, workers on
the ground secured the logs with pre-anchored
cables to make sure the valuable wood doesn't
float away. Long before the logs arrived, the
crew anchored the cables by driving metal stakes
10 feet underground with a jackhammer.
Because of the soggy terrain and the heft of
the 20-foot tree trunks, it was actually cheaper
for the Trust to pay $4,600 an hour, plus a
$10,000 access fee, to rent a helicopter than
to bring the logs in any other way, said stewardship
manager Ian Sinks.
The log placement is a bold step forward in
the organization's effort to reverse the effects
of diking and draining that made the 105-acre
property suitable for grazing dairy cows in
the early 1900s. The $80,000 job builds on two
successful dike breaches that have invited the
Walluski River back onto the site since 2005.
Sinks and his colleagues will be watching to
see if their four-hour effort to deposit wood
into the bare waterway will help restore the
historic flows that supported salmon and other
fish populations.
Turning
back time
With
the help of the expert wood haulers at Columbia
Helicopter, the 52 logs were placed strategically
along the unnaturally flat streambed to help
create nooks and crannies in the channel.
As the water flows around the wood, it will
scour some of the surrounding soil and create
pools where fish can find a safe haven from
swift, shallow currents and predators. In some
places where the channel currently dries out
during low tide, the wood could create water
deep enough for fish to remain at the site throughout
the tidal cycle.
The wood will also improve conditions for plants
and insects, eventually serving as nurse logs
for larger vegetation and possibly - way down
the line - a few spruce trees.
Originally the property was all marshland, Sinks
said, but wood would have distributed itself
in the tidal channels during high water events.
As the land was transformed into pasture, it
was cleared of woody debris and replanted.
"People wanted to use this for agriculture,
and wood just gets in the way," he said. "If
you want to make it pasture, you want to get
rid of the wood, you want to make it grass,
you want to drain the water and make it dry,
and you want to flatten it, so all of that was
done."
Through dike breaches and now log placements,
the land trust is working to undo that work
and return the property to a tidal wetland.
Speedy
recovery
Since
the land trust bought the Walluski River property
three years ago, the surrounding dike has been
breached in two places, and water has flooded
the pasture.
The first breach happened naturally in 2005,
restoring a historic channel. The tides flowed
in immediately, reviving remnant channels along
50 acres of the property.
The landowner didn't want to pay to repair the
dike to keep the land dry, so the land trust
bought the property.
"We had an interest because this kind of tidal
wetland has been lost so much in the estuary
and in Youngs Bay in particular," said Sinks.
"It's all been converted to other uses, and
this one was pretty marginal in terms of agricultural
productivity."
To Columbia Land Trust's delight, the property
started restoring itself before any restoration
work could even begin.
Invasive reed canary grass gave way to native
plants including tules, bullrush, water plantain,
arrowroot and burr reed. The native plants,
in turn, drew waterfowl and wildlife to the
property.
"In three years, this site is doing fantastically
well," said Sinks. "We've breached a number
of dikes in the Columbia River estuary, and
this is probably the best site we've seen vegetatively.
It's really converted itself back to native
vegetation."
Earlier this year, the Trust breached the dike
in a second location, reactivating another channel
historically used by fish.
Now the group hopes to study the two channels
- one lined with the donated logs and one without
any wood - to see how they differ.
Landowners
donate logs
The
Columbia Land Trust has had a lot of help completing
the latest phase of the Walluski River restoration
project. The North Coast Watershed Association
collected the 52 logs from local landowners
with funding from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement
Board. The Lower Columbia River Estuary Partnership
and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
both contributed funds to help pay for the project
planning and implementation.
Micah Russell, director of the Columbia River
Estuary Study Taskforce, said when the watershed
association stockpiled the storm-damaged wood
earlier this year, no one knew exactly where
it would end up. But with so much extra wood
lying on the ground, it was a good time to solicit
donations. The association removed the wood
for free in exchange for the gift.
"A lot of landowners don't necessarily have
the equipment or the resources to get this wood
hauled off," Russell said. "And some of it is
not really timber quality, so it's not like
they would get paid for it. The idea was to
help them get it off their property. Many times
it had fallen over their driveway or over their
house or barn, and we thought we might as well
put it to use in habitat."
Students
will pitch in
To
find out if the log placement project has any
affect on fish habitat, someone will need to
monitor the Walluski River channel and test
for the presence of fish.
Sinks is looking to Astoria High School science
teacher Lee Cain and his next crop of students
to help with some of the monitoring work.
So far, Columbia Land Trust employees have seen
some juvenile salmon in the channel but haven't
done any testing to get specific numbers.
"We know they're here, we just don't have any
sense of how many," Sinks said.
Beyond just watching and testing the site, the
land trust doesn't have any more plans to change
the channel, other than removing some weeds
and planting native vegetation along the banks.
"We don't want to be out here constantly trying
to fight nature," said Sinks. "We want nature
to take over."
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