Trillium Community Forest Restoration Project
| Published: February 9, 2012 – 5:53 pm
NEWS RELEASE
February 1, 2012
For Immediate Release:
Contact: Pat Powell, Executive Director (360) 222-3310; pat@wclt.org
Whidbey Camano Land Trust Announces Trillium Community Forest Restoration Project
Whidbey Island, WA – The Whidbey Camano Land Trust announced today that it has begun a six-week forest thinning restoration project on a dense portion of the 654-acre Trillium Community Forest to restore it to a more natural and healthy condition.
The restoration project to thin about 60 acres of dense, small trees in the central section of the community forest located between Freeland and Greenbank began January 16 and will continue until February 29, depending on weather and site conditions.
The work, managed by contractor Janicki Logging Company of Sedro Woolley, will help correct a poorly managed forest clogged with unhealthy stands of young Douglas fir fighting for light and nutrients and creating a forest floor barren of plants and wildlife, said Pat Powell, Land Trust executive director.
“Forest thinning work is something we approach very carefully and we absolutely feel it is essential to help return the Trillium Community Forest to a condition that is more natural and provides greater benefits to both the habitat and the public,” Powell said. “Our contractor utilizes specialized, low-impact equipment and is experienced in ecological restoration logging with demonstrated successes in Washington State.”
Powell said the Land Trust’s goal for the restoration project is to actively maintain and enhance the wildlife habitat and to encourage the forest to develop healthy, old-growth characteristics that correct poor forest management following the last commercial timber harvest in 1990 when the land was privately held.
“Removing some of the weaker trees will reduce competition, allowing more light to reach the forest floor and promoting growth of a native plant understory,” Powell said. “This, in turn, will enhance wildlife habitat, especially for a variety of bird life. Thinning young, dense forest stands has also been shown to improve tree growth, resistance to disease and insect invasion, ability to survive wildfires, and the forest’s visual appearance.”
Clinton-based wild land ecologist and restoration biologist Elliott Menashe agreed with the Land Trust’s plans to conduct “ecologically sound thinning operations” on over-stocked areas within the forest. “Judicious and responsible thinning of over-crowded trees at this time will improve overall forest health, reduce wildfire risk, improve wildlife habitat, and encourage the development of a more diverse forest community with larger and healthier individual trees, while significantly accelerating the advancement of old-forest characteristics within the thinned areas,” he said.
Whidbey Audubon Society past-president Sarah Schmidt said her organization “strongly supports the tree thinning at Trillium.” Schmidt took a recent Land Trust tour of the affected area and later said, “Once you step away from the trail just a few feet, you find yourself in a thicket of tightly packed trees of a single species. It is so dense with spindly trunks and interlaced dead branches that a bird would have a hard time flying through. Little light reaches the forest floor and there is no understory, meaning there are few insects for food, little shelter and no vegetation for nesting. The restoration thinning will help transform the forest toward one of greater diversity and much higher value as habitat for wildlife.”
The property will remain open during the thinning process, Powell said, but trails in the immediate vicinity of the thinning area will be closed.
The Trillium Community Forest, the largest remaining contiguous forest on Whidbey Island, was acquired by the Land Trust in late 2010 after a successful grass-roots community effort. Visit www.wclt.org to learn more about the Whidbey Camano Land Trust, the Trillium Community Forest and the forest restoration project.
