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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2018
Habitat: Project will alter flattened fields with hilly hummocks
Continued from Page 1A
lost to development, said Jason Smith, a hab-
itat restoration project manager with the task
force. Salmon depend on the habitat as they
move from fresh to salty water.
Aerial photos show portions of the land —
diked and drained for agriculture by the 1930s
and cut in half by U.S. Highway 30 by the
1970s — slowly returning to wetlands as levees
broke down and breached. By the 1980s, most
agriculture around the creeks had gone away,
Smith said, leaving a crippled levee system too
expensive to rebuild to modern-day standards.
“While we don’t want to be taking any
serviceable (agricultural) land out of produc-
tion, because there’s not a whole lot of it, this
is no longer serviceable,” Smith said. “It kind
of gives us a rare opportunity to bring back
the other economic driver for our community,
which is salmon.”
With funding from the BPA, the task force
will hire contractors this summer to remove
about 2,000 feet worth of levees and restore
meandering tidal inlets. A Portland & West-
ern Railroad spur, with trestle bridge cross-
ings over the mouths of Bear, Mary’s and Fer-
ris creeks, will not be affected by the project.
The former agricultural fields are mostly
filled with reed canary grass, a largely inva-
sive species used in pastures and for shore sta-
bilization. The project will purposely alter the
flattened fields with hilly hummocks meant to
mimic the historic spruce swamps, promote
diverse plant growth including wapato and cat-
tails and phase out the canary grass. A diverse
plant community will support bugs, rodents,
birds and mammals. The improved nutrients
from the wetlands will help provide food for
salmon in the river’s main stem.
Much of the Pacific Northwest’s power is
hydroelectric. Most of it is created at the BPA’s
eight federal dams on the Columbia and lower
Snake rivers. To offset their impact on 13
endangered species of salmon and steelhead,
the agency funds approximately $500 mil-
lion in restoration projects each year. BPA has
paid for the restoration of nearly 4,000 acres
of habitat in the Lower Columbia estuary, said
spokeswoman Michelle Helms, and is provid-
ing $632,000 for the Bear, Mary’s and Ferris
creeks project.
Voluntary flooding
Just as the task force depends on BPA to
fund its projects, the group requires landown-
ers willing to return their fields to the tides.
Scott Thompson, who owns Blackberry Bog
Farm with his wife, Bonnie, along Bear Creek
south of Highway 30 in Svensen, was one of
the three private landowners to show interest
in the project. Below the farm lies an L-shaped
stretch of wetlands bounded by broken-down
levees and the highway, which cuts off another
small parcel of wetland he owns to the north.
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
The Columbia River Estuary Study Task-
force is planning to restore several areas
of wetlands near Svensen, including a
parcel along the upper reaches of Fer-
ris Creek just below a bridge along U.S.
Highway 30.
“We bought this place three years ago, and
it had been abandoned for 15 years,” Thomp-
son said. “And we knew when we bought it
that Bear Creek was a salmon stream.”
Thompson has taken part in other resto-
ration along Bear Creek and hosts a screw trap
to count juvenile salmon coming downstream.
“Part of what we wanted to do as a farm,
we wanted to make sure we were good stew-
ards of the land, including the creek, the wet-
lands and the like,” Thompson said. “We knew
there were areas we weren’t going to be able
to farm.”
Tim Peitsch, a maintenance foreman at the
Port of Astoria, bought his property along the
upper reaches of Ferris Creek about five years
ago and situated a house over a flood plain just
below a bridge on Highway 30. With the task
force paying to restore the flood plain and him
retaining ownership afterward, there are no
downsides to the project, Peitsch said.
“Part of the reason we bought the property
and situated the house where we did is to be
able to enjoy viewing the habitat,” he said.
Good projects
The project includes two large plots of land
along Mary’s Creek, the farthest west of the
three tributaries. The eastern bank is owned by
Dean Budget and Sandra Gadwood. The west-
ern banks passed into Clatsop County owner-
ship through tax foreclosure.
“This project is probably as good as any
for stabilizing shoreline,” said Julia Decker, a
county planner. “With all the changes going on
in the world, anything we can do that keeps the
flood plain intact, stabilizes shoreline, expands
habitat, these are good projects.”
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
The land south of Svensen Slough, a historic spruce swamp, has been transformed over
time by agricultural conversion and the construction of U.S. Highway 30.
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