December 11, 2015 • Seaside Signal • seasidesignal.com • 11A VIOLETS return to Clatsop Plains KATHERINE LACAZE/SEASIDE SIGNAL Seaside High School students help the North Coast Land Conservancy and other community volunteers plant more than 10,000 early blue violets on the Clatsop Plains. Conservancy plants the native fl owers to lure threatened Oregon silverspot butterfl y back By Katherine Lacaze Seaside Signal CLATSOP PLAINS — About 9,000 early blue violet seedlings, native to the region, found a new home — or rather, returned to home — at sites across Clatsop Plains, assisted by volunteers from local com- munities who helped the North Coast Land Conser- vancy during the organiza- tion’s two-day violet plant- ing event Nov. 20 and 21. Planting the fl ower seed- lings was the latest chapter in the conservancy’s decade- long quest to restore a prairie habitat on the Clatsop Plains and Long Beach (Wash.) KATHERINE LACAZE/SEASIDE SIGNAL Seaside High School students Whitney Westerholm (left) and Brittany West share a laugh while volunteering with the North Coast Land Conservancy. Peninsula that will bring back a robust Oregon silverspot butterfl y population, which is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The diet of the butterfl y lar- vae consists entirely of dried violet stems and leaves. There to get the violets into the ground were near- Call Hardworking Professional... ly 90 volunteers, including about 20 students from Sea- side High School’s Nation- al Honor Society and art of ethnobotany classes. Com- munity members joined in from as far away as New- port and Lincoln City, with only a few repeat volun- teers between the two days. “The fortunate weather certainly favored our high turnout,” Stewardship Di- rector Melissa Reich said. Using native plants The early blue violet shoots were developed from seeds collected since 2006 at Camp Rilea and elsewhere on Clatsop Plains. From there, seeds were taken to the Natural Resources Conser- vation Service’s Plant Mate- rials Center in Corvallis to be planted. When the seed pods reached maturity, the center gathered the fl owers’ scat- tered seed to make a stock of more than 16,000 seeds. “We keep the seed from the different regions sepa- rate because the habitat and conditions are different,” Re- ich said. “Our violets need to thrive in very sandy soils and coexist with all the other native dune prairie plants in the area.” In 2014, a bag of Cor- vallis-grown violet seeds was sent to the North Coast Restoration Partnership’s temporary native plant nurs- ery in Tillamook. A group of young men from Camp Tillamook, an Oregon Youth Authority facility, fi lled thousands of plastic plug containers with seeds. The seedlings spent most of 2014 and the winter of 2015 at the nursery, where they were exposed once again to the coastal environ- ment. In July, the conservan- cy collected thousands of the burgeoning shoots and brought them back to the organization’s Circle Creek property near Seaside to con- tinue maturing in time for fall planting. On Clatsop Plains, ap- proximately 9,000 violets were placed at two sites owned by the land conser- vancy — Neacoxie Forest and Reed Ranch — and one site owned by the Nation- al Park Service — John B. Yeon Scenic Corridor. The conservancy is planting the violets into plots treated last fall by an excavator that re- moved topsoil. “We waited a year after the treatment to give the little violets an extra year to grow and develop their roots,” Re- ich said. Overall, the group had about 16,000 violets. The remainder were planted at the conservancy’s Surf Pines property and are going to be planted later at the Willapa National Wildlife Refuge on the Long Beach Peninsula, Reich said. Partnership continues work The conservancy is in the second year of a fi ve-year North Coast prairie resto- ration project with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service and Willapa National Wild- life Refuge. The primary goal of the project is to boost the native prairie ecosystem be- ing lost primarily to develop- ment, Reich said. A factor in restoring the habitat is bringing back the Oregon silverspot butterfl y population. Clatsop Plains and the Long Beach Peninsula used to teem with butterfl ies of that species but they hav- en’t been seen since the 1990s, Reich said. They were listed as threatened in 1980. The clos- est remaining population is at Mount Hebo. The partners said they believe that is because the environment on those prairie lands has changed. Some vi- olets remain, but not enough to support a robust butterfl y population. “If we can restore the habi- tat, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will be able to re-in- troduce the butterfl y to the North Coast,” Reich said. The conservancy is man- aging the coastal prairie hab- itat using strategies such as planting native plants and removing invasive species, the most prevalent of which is Scotch broom. “All of the coastal prai- rie habitat has been invaded at some level, and we need to keep on top of it because it quickly shades out native prairie species,” Reich said. The group seeks volun- teer help for its occasional “broombuster” events. After the violets are plant- ed into the research plots, the Institute of Applied Ecology in Corvallis will monitor them in the spring and make rec- ommendations for adaptive management. 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