Watershed tour provides flood of educational opportunities
Prep swimming: Philomath teams take thirdPrep girls basketball: Monroe pulls away from JeffersonOSU women's basketball: Beavers return to court after big upset winOSU football: Brent Brennan 'feels lucky' to be staying in CorvallisPhilomath's Boss helps Virginia to NCAA soccer titleOSU baseball: Beavers will have 20 games televised on Nike Free 5.0 Nz.html Pac 12 NetworksThe ghost of Christmas weird: Wanderlust Circus performs 'A Christmas CarolWalk the CAWMusic lineupNo da Vinci Days Replica Ray Bans Uk festival planned for 2015Box officeChristmas concert roundup, part IISome 90 Corvallis residents went on an educational adventure this week, receiving instruction in botany, forestry, endangered species, fish habitat and water treatment.The event was Wednesday's annual tour of the Rock Creek watershed, sponsored by the city of Corvallis. as two school buses Nike Free Running Shoes Nz left City Hall and headed west amid scattered showers toward threatening clouds.Here's how it looked on the tour, stop by stop:Just inside the Rock Creek bridge and the locked gate that limits public access to the watershed, the group was introduced to the peacock larkspur, a state endangered flower Cheap Oakley Sunglasses Uk in the buttercup family that has a population just inside the watershed.City watershed program specialist Jennifer Ward noted that habitat preservation efforts such as the removal of blackberry bushes by hand have markedly increased the Buy Nike Online Nz number of plants in the watershed in recent years."We're happy to see our peacock larkspur doing so well," said Ward as she pointed to a specimen of the white flower with a dark blue center.Back on the bus, the tour members headed uphill amid chirping songbirds and a lush understory of ferns atop a carpet of moss.Frank Davis, a forest planner with the Siuslaw National Forest, is the guide, pointing out spots in the creek where logs were dropped by helicopters to improve fish habitat.Boulders were deposited in the bottom of culverts to simulate a stream bed for the native cutthroat trout."It convinced the fish," said Davis.Forest management has changed dramatically since the heyday of the 1970s and '80s when the Siuslaw yielded 400 million board feet per year."We changed from a Pandora Jewelry Online Nz high producing forest to about zero," said Davis, pointing down a Nike Free Run 5 Mens soggy ravine at about 1,000 feet of elevation at a stand of 40 to 50 year old trees that recently had been thinned."Our goal is for large diameter branches, four inches or larger, for owl habitat," said Davis, noting the influence of the northern spotted owl, whose listing as endangered Nike Janoski Max Black Nz put a serious crimp in logging on public lands throughout the Northwest.Tour stop 3: After a clear cutA little farther down the hill, Mark Miller of Trout Mountain Forestry, which manages the Corvallis Forest for the city, stood in front of a section that had been clear cut in 1960.The stand was planted densely in Douglas firs afterward and was harvested and thinned five years ago. Shade tolerant Western hemlock and Western red cedar were planted to provide understory.The plantings have grown to 5 to 6 feet tall."The stand is stable and growing well," Miller said. "It is well on its way to being a mature, diverse forest."Jeff Reams, a wildlife biologist who is working with Trout Mountain, then explained how the group is searching in the watershed for the elusive and endangered marbled murrelet.The marbled murrelet, which Reams notes "is the size of a fat robin," is a seabird that flies as many as 50 miles inland to nest in a conifer with large, lateral, moss covered branches.
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