WatershedEvents

KNOWING DOUGLAS

The highly anticipated project involving a stand of Douglas firs on the north and east sides of our lot is finally under way. Daughter Erica and I hung tags on the first six of the bunch yesterday. I hope to tag a few more today. Once I have the tagging chore taken care of I will start documenting various aspects of their day-to-day existence.

The tagging itself is as challenging as I thought it was going to be. Only a few of the trunks are easily accessible from a wheelchair, which means I will have to involve others. That’s not always easy given personal schedules; but several friends and family members have offered to help when they can. I should be able to make progress, although it’s hard to know right now what that will look like. It’s fair to say I’m mostly making this up while it’s going along.

For context #5 (L) and #6 and the underbrush and general lay of the land between me and the trees.     

Part of the problem is that I’m not at all sure exactly what I’m after, if anything. Cataloging is the best single-word description I’ve been able to come up with, when I’ve tried to explain it to others, and that seems as useful a term as anything else. But really, in a way I’m just trying to “hang” a little more tightly and closely with these magnificent “beings.”

One of the more accessible trees in the section completed today.

Trees are amazing and wonderful things, no matter how you approach the subject, and worthy of as much respect and interest you can give them. We’ve handled them brutally for much of our wretched, resource-driven existence – much in the same brutal and careless manner with which we’ve handled every other “thing” on Earth I might add. That’s why we ought to try thinking in terms of verbs rather than nouns…it’s refreshing to stop and reconsider the possibilities.

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Note: When I first composed the last line of the third paragraph above I used the word ‘creatures.’ Only later did I decide to use the word ‘creations’ instead. I’m ok with either term, but in actual fact a third term seems more accurate for the particular context I have in mind. Hence the final word-choice ‘beings.’ But I’m still thinking it over….

MOTHING - WHO KNEW?

Moth trap prototype. Modifications coming soon,

My first recollection of encountering the mysterious side of moths came one night long ago, when my mother and I discovered a Luna moth fluttering around the light on our back porch. Neither of us had ever seen anything like it and we had no idea what it was. No such thing as Google, of course – it was in the mid-1950s – so we had to wait until she could get to the small library in the nearby county seat to get an ID.       

We lived in hill-country of northern Arkansas at the time and were always seeing new things in nature; but rarely did we ever see anything more exciting and strange than that moth. What a fabulous and mysterious creature.

My roots in Natural History can be traced back to many childhood encounters with the natural wonders of an Arkansas Red Oak forest, including that marvelous Luna moth. They left me with an appreciation for the natural world that sustains me even now, when my mobility and range of motion are severely limited. Every now and then, however, I get wind of a great activity or two that is within my range of capabilities. “Mothing” is one of those.

The inspiration for this new activity comes from an Instagram site, @clouded.silver, which is the project of a fascinating person living on “a tiny Scottish island.” The site features information on everything from moths to oysters It also provides a wide range of DIY information ranging from how to harvest and prepare “Gut Weed” salads to making your own low-budget moth trap. It was her series of moth photos and her trap information that has led me to try my hand at it. 

The trap design is rather simple, all in all, and easy to make. It's also inexpensive to put together – I made mine for under $60, and a little more time spent shopping could easily have lowered that initial investment. A potentially expensive add-on turns out to be the purchase of a good visual resource that will help with the identification process. The best for this region of the country I’ve been able to track down so far appears to be Moths of Western North America, and it runs about $80 at Abe Books. 

I think I’ll wait until I have actually trapped a few moths to identify before I’ll take the plunge. Meanwhile I have a couple old handbooks on lepidoptery that may see me through. Here's my first night's take. (The books tell you setting a trap during a full moon is likely to yield less than a bucket full.) I'll try again later in July, when the moon is closer to New.

 

TROUBLE IN PRADISE DEPARTMENT

The central pond at Mclane Nature Trail Park.

I recently received an email from Friends Of Mclane (FOM), a recently formed wetlands advocacy group. They are bringing attention to a plan by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to lease a couple parcels of timber in the State’s Capitol Forest. The proposed lease of the two parcels, called Bears U1 and U2, is aimed at a start date  of 2025, with cutting to begin sometime in 2027.

The land involved first entered the State of Washington’s inventory of assets in 1889 when it was granted Statehood. The initial parcel of 5,000 acres became The Capitol State Forest by legislative act in 1933. The act also specified that the property was to be managed in perpetuity as a commercial forest.

Initially a total of 14,000 acres of land ended up being involved in the establishment of the forest, but over time the holding has grown to include 25,000 more. The 182 acres involved in the Bears leases are more than likely part of the initial trust, and just a small portion of the entire repository. The acreages were logged the last time in the 1980s-1990s, which means it’s a mature forest, but not old-growth by any stretch.

What sort of involvement I’ll have with the group I’m not sure. The founding members are neighbors, although not close ones. I share their general concerns in many ways; but the organization itself is just getting started and has a hard task ahead of it. Launching a watershed advocacy group isn’t as easy in these politically complex and relatively unfriendly times as it once was in the 70’s and 80’s, when the Clean Water Act was new, the popularity of environmental protest was young, and environmental litigation strong.

I can see one issue in particular that might create some initial and long term problems for the group: Emphasis on the potential impact of the leases on property values. Arguments from that point of view are hard to mount and even harder to sustain. If the group focuses too much on that angle it runs the risk of inviting the dismissive label of NIMBY. That label once established is extremely hard to overcome.

For most people not living in this particular area of Olympia, probably the only rock-bottom issue here may be the potential impact on salmon and their protections. Improper logging practices have been a major concern for quite some time, particularly logging in landslide country. Washington's DNR does a great job of making much of their research data available on the internet, and the LIDAR maps of landside prone areas and other geological info are fascinating material. The slopes of at least some portions of the Capital Forest have been LIDAR mapped and would be well worth a study to see if either of the Bears proposed sites are high-risk. That would not automatically put the skids to those projects, but it would probably increase the attention given to the site work.

Mclane Creek is a lovely gem of a salmon stream and certainly deserves all the attention and care it can get. It has already been heavily impacted on some reaches by human action and suffers significantly from the Urban Stream Syndrome. It would be a shame to see it further degraded.

GREEN GIANTS AND MYSTERY TREES

When we moved into this house we were impressed by the large number of evergreens in the yard, as well as all those in the adjacent neighborhood. For the most part the homes, particularly the older ones were built with the native landscape at least partially in mind. Ours certainly was, for which we are eternally grateful. As a result a major portion of the forest that originally covered this land is still intact.

Having lived in Washington and Oregon for more than 40 years you would think we might have become a bit jaded with all the greenery by now; but we are still in love with all the plant-life, particularly the tall trees that have surrounded us most of the time. Cedars, hemlocks, Douglas fir, Big leaf maple, Red alder, and a dozen other species of tree have been the literal backdrop for the greater portion of our lives.

For the first half-dozen years we lived here we were content to just admire them. After all, a stand of giants, be they firs or cedars, should be a sight you just don’t get used to. And to have it growing in your backyard, literally, is simply wonderful.

But then an old Red cedar came down in a nearby neighbor's yard, and I became interested in knowing the cause. That in turn led me to spend a lot more time getting to know more about their natural history in general. The more I studied the more fascinated I became with all the trees growing on our property, particularly the big Douglas firs that dominate every other plant type on the property (Red cedars excluded of course).

That interest culminated in the idea for a project. I began making plans for its execution almost four years ago. Then health issues sidelined me for a bit. I’m only just now beginning to make some headway with a revised plan for photographing and cataloging the key characteristics of the more noteworthy and accessible specimens on the property.

It was during the initial research for this project that I discovered a bit of a mystery among the trees that line the rear of our property – two trees that that don’t quite fit in with any of the others we have.

The larger trees we enjoy daily are Douglas fir, and for the longest time I just assumed these two were of that variety. They are definitely young conifers of some kind or another, but their bark seems somehow different. One preliminary ID was Spruce, because the needles are somewhat sharp; but the idea has since been abandoned. Balsam firs were also candidates for a time, but were ultimately ruled out because of their range.

The two trees stand at the very rear of the yard. They are about 10 feet apart, and the lower sections are very overgrown with Hazel nut saplings and scrub Maple. Maneuverability – always a bit of a problem on rough terrain in the wheelchair – makes getting a clear shot of their full extent particularly challenging. That and things like a phalanx of stinging nettles that effectively block one line of approach.

In spite of all that, and with the help of a neighbor I have managed to get my hands on part of a lower limb, complete with some clean and well formed needles.

I’ve also managed to get a few shots of the lower section of the trunk of the largest.

More than likely they are Silver firs, which are native to this area. But If they are Silver firs, then we have yet another mystery: that species is normally found at higher elevations, or in cooler, wetter environments. We are at about 200+ feet here, and our climate is what gets described as being “Mediterranean.” How did the two of them end up in this group of Douglas firs?

I will keep an open mind continue and with my project. In the meantime suggestions and comments are more than welcome! You can enter them in the comments section below, or email me directly at upfannocreek.com.