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