What’s your reason?

“What’s Your Reason?” – Well? What is your reason? Why do you want to help improve & expand public land? Is it to ensure you have beautiful natural areas to enjoy, is it solitude you strive for, to ensure you have healthy populations of animals to hunt, or maybe to ensure your children and grandchildren get to enjoy the beautiful Pacific Northwest?

Whatever your reason is, we understand it and we understand how important this cause is. It’s an unfortunate reality of today that with the more populated the pacific northwest becomes the more trafficked and trashed our land becomes.

This is the message we talked about at the Pacific Northwest Sportsmen show in Portland over the past 5 days. Speaking with nearly 500 individuals we learned that most of the land users do what they can to “Leave No Trace” by packing out what they packed in! Many times the first question was “are you pro-hunting?”. Our answer to this is exactly as it’s written in our position statements – “Project Wilderness is not opposed to any lawful, ethical, responsible and safe recreational activity on public land…” This quailed fears that we might be a political advocacy group trying to lock groups out of the forest. Many even asked, and signed up, to volunteer at future events!
Oh and I can’t forget to mention that the Jerky Hut was on our left and kept feeding me “free samples” which of course suckered me into buying the double habanero explosion of fire in your mouth. Wow, that stuff is HOT!! On Sunday we walked around to check out all the goodness and I even picked up a few items for myself.

It was a long but great 5 days. We look forward to working with everyone in future cleanup events. Speaking of trash on public land; we’re currently looking for input on public access areas that are in need of assistance.

To recap the project we’d been working on over the past couple months; we’ve completed the restoration site along the Wilson River. After cutting down Himalayan Blackberries and cutting 6 & 7 inch thick rooted English Ivy off mature trees. In replace of those invasive species we planted:

Big Leaf Maple
Black Cottonwood
Western Red Cedar
Sitka Spruce
Vine Maple
Indian Plum
Cascara
Crabapple

Also, a trail was added allowing easier access to the Wilson River.

Make sure to email us your suggestions or request for cleanup location(s) in Oregon or Washington and then stay tuned to see the schedule coming for spring!! Until then, enjoy our beautiful Pacific Northwest! Here’s a couple photos from planting;

Asha Planting

Dominic Planting

Trees Planted

A machete, handsaw and large pruning shears

A machete, handsaw and large pruning shears, those are  our battle weapons of choice this weekend!  Asha, secretary of Project Wilderness and I went to Tillamook to meet with Michele Long, ODFW Biologist, and begin working on one of several co-operative projects.

It was a beautiful Oregon winter day in the coastal town of Tillamook. Going through the Tillamook State Forest it was snowing fairly heavily mixed with rain. However, once on the down slope of the coastal range it began to clear up. Standing along the Wilson River looking towards the forest you’d see patches of fog rising from the canopy. The Wilson was moving very fast, and seemed to be rising. The north fork water was a striking green, while the Wilson was a dirty brown. Michele noted that the North Fork has very little timber harvest or roads along it, which accounts for the clearer water.

Our goal for today was to remove as much of the blackberries & ivy as possible in the 3 hours available. Asha was on ivy duty to begin & I was on blackberry duty…thanks Asha, give me the pokey crap! Not to worry, I was wielding the machete and leather gloves! The Himalayan berries, however, will not be defeated so easily. They laughed at my leather gloves! Who would have thought thorns easily go through leather workmen gloves .

After about 30 minutes I hear Asha walking up the river bank. I look over in the direction I hear her, as she peeks over the ridge I can tell she’s having a problem. “I can’t tell what’s the tree and what is the ivy”, Asha says. No problem, I say, I’ll come help. I make my way back down the bank with her, dodging rogue blackberry branches that forgot I called timeout to help Asha. Damn blackberries not following the rules of a war timeout!

Overview of the three trees with the Ivy removed.

When removing ivy from a tree, especially when the ivy is strongly established, it’s not required to completely remove all the leaves, roots, and stems. What is critical is to completely disconnect the roots that are established at the base of the tree from the roots that climb. Let’s review the picture below:

It may look like we cut the tree, however that's Ivy!

As the caption says it may look like we cut the tree, but what you see cut is actually the base of the ivy roots.  Do you see the foot to two foot gap we cut?

Notice the gap cut out?

The reason we cut the gap on the ivy roots is this will kill the ivy that is growing on the tree & ensure they don’t reconnect. By cutting the roots that enter the soil you’ll severely limit the amount of nutrients the ivy receives. It will receive some water and nutrients from the tree; however it will not be enough. It’s critical to ensure you’ve cut all the root systems connected to the soil. If you leave one, it’s possible it will be enough to support all ivy above it.

Ok, battle on! After assisting Asha, with what turned out to be a huge handsaw task, we double-teamed the unsuspecting berries! Haha, I brought backup this time!

We successfully cut down about 1/4 of the Blackberry patches needed to be removed. So there is plenty of work left to be done. If you’re not already, become a follower on Twitter or Facebook and come give us a hand. We’ve won the battle, but the war has no declared winner, YET!

Dominic Aiello

Founder & President

www.projectwilderness.org

www.facebook.com/projectwilderness

www.twitter.com/prowilderness