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About Cannon Beach gazette. (Cannon Beach, Or.) 1977-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 12, 2016)
AUGUST 12, 2016 • VOL. 40, ISSUE 17 WWW.CANNONBEACHGAZETTE.COM COMPLIMENTARY COPY FROM FARM TO PRESERVE Conservancy buys Boneyard Ridge, plans to add walking trails SUBMITTED PHOTO By Lyra Fontaine Cannon Beach Gazette N orth Coast Land Conser- vancy will permanently conserve Boneyard Ridge, a former com- mercial tree farm on Tillamook Head, with the goal of helping the property mature into a high-func- tioning temperate rainforest. The nonproit organization i- nalized the $1.3 million acquisi- tion of the 340-acre parcel July 27. The land is adjacent to Elmer Feldenheimer State Natural Area and Ecola State Park and west of the land conservancy’s Circle Creek Habitat Reserve in the Ne- canicum River loodplain west of U.S. Highway 101. “The whole ecosystem gets to lourish when you have that scale and connectivity,” North Coast Land Con- Katie servancy Execu- Voelke tive Director Katie Voelke said. “It’s one of those spots in the world where a small purchase makes a huge difference.” By linking 3,500 acres of con- served areas, Boneyard Ridge — which encompasses an entire watershed — creates a habitat corridor, connecting wildlife pop- ulations separated by human ac- tivities. “The way we will manage it, the trees will get bigger and older and there will be a greater diver- sity within the forest understory,” Voelke said. After decades of commercial logging, the property’s current for- est has trees from 10 to 60 years old, Voelke said. The land conser- vancy plans to take “stewardship actions that lead to an old, complex rainforest” where native plants and animals can thrive. Boneyard Ridge is home to 2 miles of salmon-bearing streams, amphibians such as red-legged frogs and Columbia torrent sala- manders, and mammals that in- clude black bears and elk. About 90 bird species — including pileated woodpeckers, olive-sided lycatch- ers, bald eagles and rufous hum- mingbirds — live or make a migra- tion stopover at Boneyard Ridge. Wildlife species at Ecola State Park, including black bears and lying squirrels, could use the Boneyard Ridge habitat as well. The purchase was funded with a $524,000 grant from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, $500,000 from an anonymous do- nor, and contributions from more than 120 additional donors. North Coast Land Conservancy has worked to conserve Boneyard Ridge in partnership with Lewis and Clark Timberlands since 2011. In March, North Coast Land Conservancy signed a purchase and sales agreement with Green- Wood Resources and had raised $1.1 million. Since then, they have raised the last $200,000 needed to make the purchase. Voelke emphasized the land’s accessibility — one can see it driv- ing on Highway 101. Within the next few years, the land conservancy will work to cre- ate a system of trails. “We’re really excited about being able provide trails and rec- reation so close to town for resi- dents,” Voelke said. “We feel like this can be a new, super special place for people who call it home … This is something we all get to have now forever.” Cannon Beach adopts irst strategic plan Drat lood maps Some call for more input By Lyra Fontaine Cannon Beach Gazette PAID PERMIT NO. 97 ASTORIA, OR PRSRT STD US POSTAGE The Cannon Beach City Council has unanimously voted to adopt the city’s irst strategic plan, though some residents called for the council to wait another month to allow for more community input. “I am very proud of the council and staff and the amount of dedication and work they put into this,” City Man- ager Brant Kucera said at the August 2 meeting. “It’s the foundation we’re going to need to move forward as a commu- nity. There is no good reason to delay this.” The plan, a ive-year road map for the city that will be revisited every two years, is a way to “align our human re- sources with our budgetary resources to ensure that these priorities get done,” he said. The city’s top focus is af- fordable housing, with goals that include adding 25 units by 2018. Oficials also prioritized infrastructure planning and maintenance, emergency man- agement, relationship with the community and effective gov- ernment. City councilors and staff removed the goal of temporar- ily suspending new transient lottery rentals, a topic debated at Planning Commission meet- ings last month. At meetings in May, coun- cilors and city department heads analyzed citizen survey results, discussed city issues, identiied priorities and set “measurable” goals for each priority. “This is a working docu- ment describing our council’s direction to staff and ourselves for the foreseeable future,” Councilor Mike Beneield said. Goals include establishing a mass care site at the city- owned South Wind property, deciding whether to purchase the elementary school site by the year’s end, creating more downtown parking, adopting inancial policies and more. See Plan, Page 5A Re-examining myths in the Middle Village Archaeology provides insight on fur trading era By Lyra Fontaine Cannon Beach Gazette During the Corps of Discovery’s explora- tion of the west, Lewis and Clark described NeCus Village and campsites on the Colum- bia River. Written accounts are useful, but do not tell a complete story about Native Ameri- can contact with European and American fur traders. “What people say and what people do are sometimes very different things,” National Park Service archaeologist Dr. Doug Wilson said at a Cannon Beach History Center and Museum guest lecture in July. “The history that we know about is written by... the con- querors that often had a bias about the way the world was.” See Myths, Page 6A LYRA FONTAINE/CANNON BEACH GAZETTE National Park Service archaeologist Doug Wilson discusses what artifacts can tell us about a past society at a Cannon Beach His- tory Center and Museum lecture. shrink city’s hazard zones By Erick Bengel EO Media Group New federal lood plain maps would shrink the lood hazard zones in Cannon Beach, Gearhart and Seaside and lower the estimated lood elevation level at a key levee in Warrenton. Property owners will have a chance to see the impact of the Federal Emergency Man- agement Agency’s draft lood plain maps on Clatsop Coun- ty communities at an open house next week. The event — scheduled for 6 p.m. Monday at the Seaside Civic and Conven- tion Center — will focus on FEMA’s latest revisions to lood maps in Gearhart, Sea- side, Cannon Beach, Clatsop County and Warrenton Levee System No. 1. The product of a multi- year countywide study, the maps — plotted with Lidar, a surveying technology that uses laser — will help resi- dents and oficials determine lood hazards in certain areas. When adopted, the maps will inluence development, lood insurance rates and land use decisions on the North Coast for years to come. “There were generally decreases in the lood hazard zones, even though eleva- tions were about the same or may have increased in some locations,” said David Rat- té, regional engineer with FEMA Region X, who will be presenting at the open house along with other experts. Reductions Gearhart will see a rough- ly 8 percent reduction in the mapped 100-year lood plain, where the lood risk in any given year is 1 in 100, according to statistics from the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Indus- tries. Seaside’s decrease is less than 8 percent. Mean- while, Cannon Beach will see an overall decrease of about 27 percent. In addition, FEMA has lowered the estimated lood elevation level of Warrenton Levee System No. 1. Re- cently, the agency provision- ally deemed the levees large enough to protect properties behind it, a decision that Col- lin Stelzig, a city engineer, called a “huge win for the city of Warrenton.” The county said it has mailed letters and draft maps to people in unincorporated areas who will see some of their land added to the lood hazard area. See Zones, Page 5A
