ENHS Nature Trails January 2005 Article 2

Where did the understory habitat go?
by Reida Kimmel

It's been a strange fall and early winter, so warm and dry. Equisetum, which is always dormant in the winter, is sending up new shoots. The Elodea (waterweed) on our pond has not sunk far beneath the surface, as the water temperatures remain in the 40s. Azola, the lovely pink water fern, is spreading in the most sheltered areas. Iris chrysophylla is several inches high in the swamp behind our property, and thistles are growing rampantly. I can point out patches of chanterelle mushrooms that have remained undecayed since they emerged from the earth in October. The fog, which everyone hates, has provided sufficient moisture for the mosses and lichens to put out their usual splendid winter show. Dig a foot or so into the earth and you will find it dry, but thanks to the fogs and what little rain we have had, the trails in the woods are very muddy.

When we go out on the horses, we generally ride by the seventy-acre clear cut on the Giustina Land Company's property that I wrote about in April's issue of Nature Trails. It is a sight to behold! Every newly planted fir tree has died, and where there were no invasive weeds under the canopy of seventy and eighty year old trees, now there is a sea of thistles. It is a well-established practice to use powerful herbicides to kill weed species on private forestlands. The definition of "weed" here is any species lacking in commercial value. Sometimes the land is sprayed from helicopters; more often it is sprayed by workers wearing poison-filled backpack sprayers. One of the least invasive means of weed control is "slash and splash": wherein the worker mutilates the shrub or young deciduous tree and sprays the cut with a lethal dose of pesticide. Recently I was talking to my butcher, a former logger, and hardly a green activist. He was telling me about the thousands of acres of dense scotch broom in the Coast Range where he lives: "The deer, they're starving. All the maple and brush they need for browse is gone." We could say the same for many species of birds as well. When you look at a forest and see a wall of healthy green, before assuming the best, look at the undergrowth. It can tell a sinister story.

What do we actually know about the amount of spraying and the types of chemicals used in our county? Not much. That is why two of my neighbors, Lynn Bowers and Mary Milo decided to find out, and then to publicize the results. It was a monumental task. Lynn got on the list that is available from the Department of Forestry and monitored each announced logging operation and spraying project. There are few or no rules controlling spraying applications. If a watershed is deemed to be free of native trout and salmon, then spraying can extend to ten feet of a stream. In other words, the more damaged an ecosystem is, the freer industry is to damage it further. Using the very detailed maps available on the Web, Mary took Lynn's information from the Forestry Department and located every site that was sprayed in 2004, by the month. Lynn then colored a large map by hand, with Mary's information, a different color for each month of spraying, cross-hatching for aerial spraying, solid color for hand applications, accurate to the quarter mile. The results are truly shocking! Large areas of the Coast range are checker-boarded with color, meaning that every privately owned square mile of those commercial forests was sprayed in 2004. Lynn and Mary are in the process of showing the map to local and state governmental officials, and I am happy to say that they are showing great interest. Something must be done soon to stop our forests and their inhabitants, and ultimately us from being assaulted with poisons. Then perhaps the brook lampreys can return to the leaf litter below the falls of the Siuslaw, and coho salmon, cutthroat trout, and the humble stickleback fish can once again thrive in this lovely river.

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