Feds pump $750K into refuge area
Tuesday, May 25, 2004 7:22 AM PDT
By Andre Stepankowsky
Printable version
E-mail this articleThe Bush Administration announced Monday that it has awarded a $750,000 federal grant to help restore an ecologically important forest near Willapa Bay.
The federal money will match a $1.15 million contribution from The Nature Conservancy, a private conservation group, and will be used to remove up to 15 miles of roads in the Ellsworth Creek Preserve.
The preserve, which is adjacent to the Willapa National Wildlife Refuge, is badly fragmented by old logging roads. Removing them will reduce erosion into streams, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the Willapa Refuge.
In addition, the grant will help develop a forest management program to restore 1,500 acres of the Ellsworth Creek area to conditions that will sustain wildlife dependent on old-growth forest conditions.
Interior Secretary Gale Norton announced the grant, which is one of three "challenge cost-share grants" to support three cooperative conservation projects in Washington. Those three grants total $852,000 and are among $21 million spread among 377 conservation project nationwide, Norton said in a press release.
Ellsworth Creek is a watershed located at the southeast corner of Willapa Bay. Over the last several years, the Nature Conservancy has acquired all but a handful of acres in the 5,000-acre basin. Although remnant stands of old growth and western red cedar survive, most of the drainage has been logged.
Scientists have long noted that the lack of mature and old-growth forest conditions in coastal areas hinders recovery of threatened species such as the spotted owl and marbled murrelets. For this reason, protection and preservation of forested watersheds around Willapa Bay is the state's most important conservation priority, according to University of Washington professor Jerry Franklin, one of the Northwest's most widely regarded forest ecologists.
Ellsworth Creek's remnant stands of old growth harbor Marbled murrelets, a seabird that seeks out old-growth forest to nest. Rare amphibians, including salamanders and tailed frogs, live in and along the creek. The stream harbors some of the area's best runs of native chum and coho salmon and cutthroat trout.
Norton said that the administration's "Cooperative Conservation Initiative" program is to enable federal land managers to partner within local communities "to better care for the land and its wildlife," Norton said. "By promoting these partnerships, we not only leverage federal conservation dollars with private funds but also tap into the ingenuity and local knowledge of the people who live and work on the land."
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