On Behalf Of Michael Marsh


I'm appealing again for people to take part in monitoring the recovery of native vegetation on Olympic National Forest roads that are to be decommissioned this year. These may be roads that were used, recently or some time in the past, in a logging operation. The Forest Service and, I presume, we, are interested both in how well the decommissioning allows native vegetation to return i. e., how soon this road looks just like a part of the forest, and whether noxious weeds intrude, or whether weeds persist that are there already.

We will measure vegetation, estimating cover on the ground of each species and counting shrubs and trees in "belt transects" at right angles to the road direction. A good opportunity to meet Opoplanax horridus! I estimate that we will ask each volunteer to give 4 weekends each summer this year (before the road treatments), and then 1, 2, 5, and hopefully 10 years after the treatments occur, probably next summer, again. We will especially welcome volunteers who can return year after year, but new and old volunteers will be retrained every year, so participation this year does not depend on your availability in the future.

The location is just north of Shelton, Washington on the Skokomish River. Travel time from Seattle is about 2.5 hours. I was out in the woods yesterday with Robin Stoddard, a hydrologist with the Service, looking at roads that we may study. One is a road that continues as a trail into the Olympics. This road already has wonderful native vegetation, and will be restored as trail, rather than being completely obliterated. Another road is on steep ground above a nice stream with very old trees in the riparian corridor, and the challenge here will be to restore the original surface contour, restore side creek drainages where culverts presently run under the road surface, and replant without
letting too much sediment go into the stream.

Lets show our love of the forest, and our commitment to seeing that the Forest Service does the right thing, while giving a gift to ourselves, being out in the woods.

This project arises out of a proposal that I made during a meeting of organizations (including the Northwest Ecosystem Alliance) and citizens helping Forest Service plan a forest thinning sale (the Flat Creek Stewardship Sale) and restoration activities afterwards under their Stewardship sale program.

On Friday, June 10, 2005, the Forest Service offered Invasive Plant training for weed coordinators and others like us who will be working in the forest. It was not necessary for everyone who will work in our group to attend, as we can pass information on to others in our training, which will occur on weekends.

Please contact me at 206.281.8976, or at swamp@blarg.net, for more information. Even if you have already replied to my earlier message about this project, I need to hear from you again.