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What is our vision for the Northern
Coast Range AMA?
We invite you to join us on an imaginary future tour, on which we will see how a part of the AMA might look 60 years from the signing of the Northwest Forest Plan. The vision presented here represents a managed, integrated approach to meeting the goals established for the AMA by the Northwest Forest Plan. It's a projected outcome of more than 50 years of applying creative ideas from local citizens, scientists, and agency staff, ideas tested, evaluated, and adjusted through the mechanism of adaptive management. No one knows, of course, exactly how things will really turn out. Our hope is that this scenario will serve as a springboard for discussion--it's one view of how an active management approach might be used to work toward the goals set for the AMA in the Northwest Forest Plan.
It is April 16, 2054. You have boarded a solar-powered bus for today's 60th-anniversary tour of the Northern Coast Range Adaptive Management Area, hosted by the Northwest Ecosystem Agency, which manages all publicly-owned lands in this region. The tour leader tells us that today's trip through the Coast Range west of the town of Carlton will show us a typical cross section of the AMA forest. The focus will be to observe how well we have met the objective of developing late-successional forest and maintaining biological diversity, while also meeting human needs.
As the bus winds its way along Meadow Lake Road, we're treated to some
grand views of Willamette Valley farms, woodlots, and small towns extending
below us to the east. As we continue up the ridge, pastures and hillside
homes gradually give way to plantations of Douglas-fir, hemlock, and western
redcedar on industrial forest lands.
As we enter publicly-owned forest lands, the texture of the forest begins
to change. We notice more large conifers dispersed among the smaller trees.
Some of the largest Douglas-fir and cedar have dead or flattened tops,
forks, rot cavities, and large limbs in the upper canopy. Our tour leader
asks if we'd like to guess the age of these patriarchs of the forest, many
of which are three to four feet in diameter. Some say 250 years, some 300.
The tour leader responds that most of them are not more than about 160
to 170 years old, having seeded in after the last major wildfire in this
area near 1890. Management treatments applied to the stand and to individual
trees have enabled them to take on some of the appearance and function
of much older trees in a relatively short period of time.
We soon begin to notice that dead trees ("snags") are everywhere a part
of the forest. Many small, dark-colored snags form as the result of natural
competition among younger trees. Very large trees that have died in the
last few years are now tall snags that still have their bark and many limbs;
those that died more than 10 years ago are hard and smooth. Short, thick,
soft brown snags are reminders of the forest that burned near 1890. Some
of the snags have visible cavities, and our tour leader informs us that
woodpeckers and flying squirrels are frequent residents. The forest
floor is littered with logs of all sizes and in various stages of decay.
On top of the older logs are thick mats of moss, red huckleberry, ferns,
and hemlock seedlings.
Multiple canopy layers, multiple species
We turn left and travel south along the crest of the Coast Range on the winding Bald Mountain Access Road. Trees of all sizes line the road, some widely spaced and fast growing, with live crowns beginning almost at the ground, and others in dense clumps with tall, thin trunks and no live limbs for 60 feet or more. Where layers of live limbs are found at several heights in a forest stand, ecologists say the stand has multiple canopy layers, a condition important to some species--such as northern spotted owls--adapted to older forests. Most of the smaller trees appear to be Douglas-fir or hemlock, but we also see cedars, occasionally a bigleaf maple, spruce, white pine, dogwood, or golden chinquapin. Groups of fast-growing red alder take advantage of openings in the tall conifer canopy.
A half-mile down the road, the forest takes on a different appearance.
The stand here is a mixture of Douglas-fir and hemlock, almost all three
feet or more in diameter. In this part of the forest, there are few gaps
between the tall crowns; in fact, the branches seem almost to meet above
the road. The result is a forest floor with little cover of shrubs, herbaceous
vegetation, or understory trees. Our tour guide explains that this variation
is an example of the horizontal diversity typical of late-successional
forests. Density, structure, and species composition vary considerably
from place to place.
Diversity of shrubs and herbaceous plants
Occasional breaks in the forest give us glimpses of the Willamette Valley
floor to the east, and beyond, the snow-capped Cascade Range summits of
Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams, and Mount Hood. We take a break from road
travel and walk through the forest on a narrow trail. Beneath areas with
a dense canopy, few understory plants are growing, but in gaps and where
the trees are more widely spaced, many kinds of shrubs crowd the slopes:
vine maple, salal, Oregon grape, rhododendron, sword fern, and huckleberry.
Among and between the shrubs are trailing stems of twinflower and dewberry,
thick dark leaves of princes-pine and pyrola, small white blooms of starflower,
showy white trillium petals, and carpets of queens-cup lily.
When we look closely beneath the shrub layer and in small openings, we find low stumps of various sizes. Our tour leader explains that the diversity of this forest is a direct result of a series of carefully planned "disturbances", in the form of periodic thinnings. Removing some of the trees in the stand at intervals allowed many of the remaining trees to grow much faster in diameter. The small openings created in the forest also made room for patches of shrubs and wildflowers and clumps of small trees. The small trail on which we're walking has served at least four times in the last 50 years as an avenue for removing merchantable logs, using lightweight, low-impact harvesters. Each time the stand was thinned, a portion of the trees selected for removal were converted to snags by being girdled or topped; other trees were felled and left in place to contribute to the supply of large woody debris. At times, certain trees in the stand were selected for habitat culturing, using a variety of techniques to stimulate development of large limbs, flat or dead tops, forks, rot cavities, and other deformities that help provide a greater diversity of habitats in the forest.
Every year, thinning operations are carried out at sites throughout
the AMA. Between 1,000 and 2,000 acres are treated annually, helping to
maintain a healthy, diverse forest and at the same time providing many
jobs, substantial income to local communities, and raw materials for wood
products manufacturers. Our leader says we'll visit an active thinning
operation later in our trip.
Returning to the bus, we travel past the rounded summit of Bald Mountain. According to our tour leader, the peak was so named because it sported a large, grassy meadow with a wooden, fire-lookout tower 120 years ago. The meadow was originally created and sustained by repeated wildfires, but gradually filled in with tree seedlings during the 100-year period of wildfire exclusion. Today, it is again a grassy meadow, a result of prescribed burning about every 10 years since 2020. Such planned burns are used to maintain a small amount of early-successional meadow habitat in the area.
Our tour leader relates how populations of deer and elk in the Bald
Mountain area, a large block of public forest land, declined substantially
from about 2005 to 2015. The elimination of clearcut timber harvesting,
combined with continued extinguishing of all wildfires, resulted eventually
in a forest with little foraging habitat for large grazing animals. Even
the industrial forest lands to the east were occupied at that time primarily
by dense, young plantations. During the past 30 years, however, prescribed
burns on small areas within the AMA have created and maintained a number
of small gaps and openings. Some of the openings are only a fraction of
an acre, but others range up to 2 or 3 acres. Deer and elk populations
are now stabilized at much higher levels than before the planned fire use--and
big game hunting continues to be one of the most popular forms of recreation
in the AMA.
In occasional views to the west, we see little obvious evidence of management activity. We are reminded that half a century ago, the forest in this part of the AMA was extensively fragmented. Well over half the timber in the area had been cut and converted to young plantations of seedlings and saplings. Between the harvested areas and in strips along the larger streams were remnant blocks of mature forest. Today, an almost continuous forest blankets the ridges and valleys of the AMA There are small openings here and there, resulting from small-patch harvest of trees, or caused by fire, windstorms, insect damage, or root disease.
The trees in today's forest vary considerably in size, but because of
the periodic thinnings and establishment of new canopy layers in the understory
layers, it is difficult to pick out just where the edges of the old clearcuts
were located. Why? Large and small trees, stumps, and understory vegetation
are present in similar quantities whether the overstory is aged 60 or 160
years. On closer inspection, of course, the largest trees, four feet and
more in diameter, are found only in the older portions of the forest. The
AMA forest now contains, across the landscape, much of the structure and
features of unmanaged forests over 200 years of age, though some of the
area was clearcut only 60 to 70 years ago. Has "old-growth" forest been
created? We would say no--we can influence the direction and rate of stand
development through management interventions--but only old age produces
true old growth. Nevertheless, many of the habitat elements needed by wildlife
species dependent on late-successional forests seem to be in good supply
in the AMA today. Recent surveys confirm steady increases in nesting use
by northern spotted owls, a bird that does best in older forests, and once
federally listed as a threatened species. By any measure, we appear to
have met the objective of restoring late-successional forest habitat, as
required by the Northwest Forest Plan of 1994.
On the south side of Bald Mountain, we get off the bus at the upper end of the Bald Mountain-Nestucca River Trail, which was originally built by enterprising fishermen more than 100 years ago to access prime fishing holes on a part of the Nestucca River that was remote from any roads. The trail has been improved, rebuilt, and linked with newer trail systems, and is maintained by the Tillamook Hoofers outings club, under the terms of a voluntary agreement with the Northwest Ecosystem Agency. Most AMA trails, according to our tour leader, are maintained through voluntary agreements.
As we talk about trail development, a group of six or seven hikers with
backpacks arrive at the roadside. They have spent the last three days exploring
AMA trails. A very fit looking elderly woman remarks that the AMA is her
favorite hiking destination in the Coast Range because of the beauty of
the forest, the abundant berries and wildlife, and the excellent trail
system. From this point, the more physically ambitious tour participants
will hike the Bald Mountain trail down to the river, walking through a
relatively large, unroaded block of forest--one of several in the AMA.
The rest of us will travel in the bus around to the bottom via forest roads.
Our bus turns west on Hoag Pass Road and begins the descent to the Nestucca River. A senior citizens club from the Yamhill area has "adopted" this road, and patrols it regularly to check for blocked culverts, trees fallen on the road, bank failures, or other maintenance needs. They keep the road clear of small trees and brush and regularly report conditions back to the agency. A local Carlton company takes care of required major maintenance on this road and several others under a long-term maintenance contract with the Ecosystem Agency. Several old spurs branching off Hoag Pass Road have been blocked to four-wheeled vehicle traffic. Some of these are now designated as horse or bicycle trails, and others are part of a network of motorcycle trails. Many years ago, these roads were "decommissioned" to eliminate the need for regular maintenance, yet allow passage by foot traffic and two-wheeled vehicles. User groups now provide most brush control and other maintenance on the trails. As a result of these road closures and conversions to trails, the road system in the AMA today has less than half the total mileage it had when the AMA was established. The roads that were retained are those in the most stable and useful locations.
Part way down the Hoag Pass Road, we stop to watch an active harvest operation. A local logging contractor is thinning a 66-year-old plantation, established in the late 1980's following a clearcut harvest. This is the stand's fourth thinning, our tour leader tells us. Logs that are surplus to habitat needs are being brought out of the woods with one end suspended by a continuous-loop moving cable system. The cable is supported by pulleys suspended from standing trees, using specially designed anchors which do not damage the bark of the tree. By using the intermediate supports, the "yarding" trail does not need to follow a single straight line, but turns several angles on its way to the landing.
Someone asks about the impacts to long-term soil productivity from this type of management. Our leader says that techniques to protect and maintain the soil resource are integral parts of the operation. The contractor selects which trees to cut and which to leave, based on detailed prescriptions provided by the Agency. He also leaves a prescribed number of the cut trees on the ground to ensure that an adequate supply of large woody debris is provided. To help prevent loss of nutrients from the site, the limbs and bark are removed from each log before it is yarded to the roadside.
The work is being done by a crew of five: three are in the woods, felling
trees, cutting them into sections ("bucking"), limbing the logs, removing
the bark with a portable barker, and attaching the logs to the cable system.
Two are at the landing, operating the yarding machine, unhooking the arriving
logs, and stacking them in soreted piles for later transport to mills.
Leaving the harvest site, we soon arrive at the parking area for Jane
Creek Recreation Site, at the lower end of the Bald Mountain Trail. Our
tour leader estimates that the hikers will begin to arrive in about half
an hour. This site looks much like well-developed public campgrounds have
looked for over a century, except that the camping and picnic sites are
not next to the water. The facility is on a flat bench above the river,
out of the sensitive riparian zone. This position results in dryer campsites
on more stable ground, and reduces the effects of recreation on the stream
and riparian zone. Our tour leader says that the Jane Creek site has over
200 camp and picnic units, but the way it's designed, no more than 3 or
4 can be seen at one time. As we break out the box lunches, the hikers
begin to arrive.
While we eat our lunches, we meet with several people who have had an active role in shaping management of portions of the AMA. They represent a variety of volunteer groups, groups that hold different ideas about what a healthy, sustainable forest is and how to achieve it. Over the last 50 years, each group has accepted "stewardship" of a small subwatershed area (1,000 acres or less) and is working in collaboration with the Northwest Ecosystem Agency to implement their vision.
One of the subwatersheds was adopted by a wilderness advocacy group. They have stabilized and closed most roads within the subwatershed, and have suspended all timber harvest and salvage. They have developed several popular trails through part of the watershed, and have maintained most of the area as virtual wilderness. Under the guidance of several scientists, they are monitoring long-term changes in a variety of habitat characteristics.
In another of the subwatersheds, generations of high-school biology classes have been involved in stream restoration, tree thinning and planting, and monitoring of past projects. As they work, they also learn about the plants, animals, and ecological systems found in the area. Each year's class of students has its own set of ideas about what to do--who knows what this year's group will cook up!
A coalition of fishermen and woods workers has been actively managing their adopted subwatershed to enhance productivity and diversity. Under their approach, individual stands are entered every 20 to 50 years to selectively harvest trees in a range of sizes. At the same time, they convert some trees to snags and fell others to increase the supply of large woody debris. Some trees are dropped into creeks to help create improved fish habitat.
In yet another drainage, representatives of local Native American tribes are intervening in stand development to increase the supply of a variety of commodities traditionally gathered from the forest. Some ridgetops have been lightly burned to maintain huckleberry fields and to create more open stands with better opportunities for hunting. Some wet meadows are being cultured and maintained to produce native camas, and cedar trees have been planted in moist areas throughout the valley to provide materials for future ceremonial log houses, canoes, and totem poles.
The groups retain much of the income generated by commercial activities
for use in planning, carrying out, and evaluating future activities. Each
stewardship group believes their approach leads to a healthy and sustainable
forest, providing for the needs of late-successional species as well as
people. They take a strong interest in the tables and graphs depicting
monitoring results to prove their point. The Forest Ecosystem Agency monitors
all stewardship plans to ensure reasonable consistency year-to-year, and
to guard against actions that might have serious negative impacts.
After lunch, we cross the Nestucca on a suspension footbridge and take
a short walk west along the Nestucca River Trail. We pass a shady hollow
where a group of 15 teenagers is working with measuring equipment and clipboards.
Our tour leader explains that they are an environmental studies class from
McMinnville High School. Today they are surveying the rate of regrowth
of mosses after controlled harvesting at this site. Many such groups
are active in the AMA: Volunteers from the local watershed council come
to monitor streamflow, water temperatures, and sediment loads; wildlife
advocacy groups survey population trends of bird species; and Scout troops
with digital infrared binoculars collect data on use of snags by rodents,
woodpeckers, bats, and birds of prey.
Our trail leads us up and over a four-foot-wide log--with hand rails--spanning
a small stream tributary to the Nestucca River. The water flows through
a series of deep pools, small cascades, and riffles separated by log jams
and woody debris. The water is cold and clear on this mild spring day,
and in the stream are assorted gravels, large downed trees, and side channels
that provide refuge and rearing areas for young fish. Most of the stream
is shaded by a canopy of alder, cedar, fir, and hemlock; occasional sunny
pools are bordered with monkey flower, bedstraw, and coolwort.
We see several large fish in the pools, which our tour leader says are
spring chinook. Populations of coho and chinook salmon and steelhead trout
fluctuate from year to year, but this year's runs in the Nestucca River
are the largest seen since the AMA was established in 1994. Improvement
in fish habitat and increase in fish populations has been and continues
to be an important objective of AMA management.
On the seasonally flooded flats adjoining the river, we see an even
greater variety of trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants than we saw on
the uplands. Cedar and hemlock dominate the stand, but Douglas-fir finds
a foothold on small, less saturated knolls. Alder, maple, and black cottonwood
fill the space between the larger conifer trees. In some places, salmonberry,
thimbleberry, and devils-club form almost impenetrable thickets. Where
the shrubs are more scattered, the soil is blanketed with mosses, oxalis,
and miners lettuce. Snags and logs are abundant, but here in this zone
of high water tables, we find only occasional stumps.
Social and economic contributions
On the drive back to the valley, several guests begin discussing social values. What does this forest mean to the people of nearby communities such as Carlton and Yamhill, or the more distant cities of Salem and Portland? Our leader says that the interactions between local communities and the AMA are continually evolving. For example:
As we step off the bus back in McMinnville, we thank our tour guide
for an enjoyable and informative trip. It has whetted our appetite to find
out how we can take part in the unfolding story of this amazing place known
as the Northern Coast Range Adaptive Management Area.