[birding] Mitigation wetlands

Sat Jun 19 17:30:01 PDT 2010

Hi Rich & all,

Evergreen Mitigation Bank and Diamond Hill wetlands are both private
property, not county or city land. Neither has anything to do with tax
problems or foreclosure avoidance. Each is a unique situation so let's
take them one at a time:

Evergreen Mitigation Bank is a private venture by Oregon Wetlands LLC,
which has been written up in the Corvallis Gazette-Times. Ray Fiori
(formerly the manager of E.E. Wilson Wildlife Area) is one of the
partners, so that's why he was out there. The idea is to provide a
mechanism for developments that impact small wetlands in the Corvallis
area to compensate by purchasing wetland restoration "credits" in the
mitigation bank, which is set up to manage the habitat basically in
perpetuity. 

This is a fairly new concept in Oregon, though I think the Astoria
Airport Mitigation Bank is based on a similar idea. Oregon Wetlands LLC
has another mitigation bank at One Horse Slough north of Lebanon. At
both places they are planting and maintaining native grassland &
riparian species, meeting some very impressive targets in terms of the
percentage of native vegetation (like, 99%).

Opinions may vary, but to me this is an improvement over the 1980s &
1990s type of "compensatory wetlands," which developers were required to
put in to compensate for loss of hydrologic function when they built
over wetlands. An example of the old type of "compensatory wetland" can
be seen in the K-Mart parking lot off of Circle in north Corvallis
(sometimes good for parking-lot gulls, but not much else). With a
mitigation bank, instead of lots of small, ecologically dysfunctional
"wetlands" (more like pits lined with rip-rap) you get a larger wetland
that can provide real ecological function, such as nesting habitat for
American Bittern, Wilson's Phalarope, and Streaked Horned Lark.

Regarding access to Evergreen Mitigation Bank, last spring Ray announced
a walking tour of the property through this list-serv, which I think
some of you participated in. They don't allow unrestricted public access
due to concerns about vandalism and other illegal activities. My
understanding is that the neighbors of the property have been helping to
keep an eye out for trespassers, so birders going out there on their own
could trigger a lot of unnecessary hassle. 

I don't know of any birders going out there on their own for
recreational reasons, though I think one or two ornithologists from OSU
have done some nesting surveys in past years. I don't get down that way
often myself, but I know that in past years Corvallis birders have had
good results by birding from the pullouts during spring shorebird
migration, before the vegetation grows in too high.

Possibly confusing the issue, there is also an Evergreen Creek property
right across Bellfountain Rd. which recently came into the hands of
Greenbelt Land Trust. I don't know much about that property or how it
will be managed. However, having this new greenbelt property adjacent to
the mitigation bank will surely be a good thing in terms of an ecosystem
that can function on a larger scale.

As for Diamond Hill wetlands, this is a totally different situation of a
private landowner (MDAK Farms?) which has been working with federal (&
state?) agencies under various conservation incentive programs. There
are other people on this list who know a lot more than me about the
details.

My understanding of that access situation is that public access is
restricted for reasons similar to those for Evergreen. Again, some OSU
ornithologists have been out there for monitoring projects, but the rest
of us have to bird the place from the road.

You can see some good birds from the road in these places, depending on
the season and the height of the vegetation. The private restorations
along Livermore Rd. and Farmer Rd. that I reported on earlier today are
similar in terms of access and visibility issues. Maybe you can hear the
birds over the berms but you can't necessarily see them. Still, you can
have a pretty good birding experience just walking along the road, if
you take your time.

Doing these meadowlark surveys for ODFW has been good for me, in terms
of teaching me some patience. I've come to realize that if you spend an
hour standing around a stretch of road, you'll eventually hear, and
probably see, most of what's there, even if you can't see over the
berms. 

At least from my point of view, it's good to have these exceptionally
good private restoration projects to augment the overall amount of
habitat that's available to birds in our area. Even if you can't get
into all of the habitat, eventually the birds will spill into areas that
are more accessible to the birding public.

Those of you who know me well, know that I'm a big fan of the Swedish
model when it comes to public access to the outdoors, see:

http://www.sverigeturism.se/smorgasbord/smorgasbord/natrecspo/nature/every.html

However, implementing this model in Oregon would require some major
changes in our concepts of liability law, not to mention a major
cultural shift in terms of respect for lands that we do all have access
to (check out the roads in the Siuslaw National Forest just south of
Toledo, for an example of why this wouldn't work here, or at least not
yet). 

So within the culture that we live in, I'm happy to have these private
restoration projects and to respect the reasons why these property
owners can't just leave the gates wide-open for birders, since by doing
so they'd have to let in everyone. But hopefully over time some
protocols can be set up that will improve access for those of us who are
willing to be responsible.

Happy birding,
Joel

On Sat, 2010-06-19 at 15:47 -0700, rich armstrong wrote:
> 1. i have been to both evergreen wetlands and diamond hill wetlands (near 
> brownsville).
> 2. both are frustrating because you can't actually go on them.
> 3. WHY? i would like to understand this.
> 4. what little i think i understand is that these lands get donated to the 
> city or county because of tax problems or forclosure avoidance, and 
> therefore, the city or county owns these lands??? is that right?
> 5. if so, why can't birders go on them?
> 6. and how do certain birders get to go on them?
> Rich Armstrong
> 541-753-1978

> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Joel Geier" <joel.geier at peak.org>
> To: "MidValley Birds" <birding at midvalleybirding.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2010 9:26 AM
> Subject: [birding] Bittern nesting at Evergreen Mitigation Bank
> 
> 
> > Hi All
> >
> > Last Thursday (10 Jun) Ray Fiori was doing vegetation surveys at the
> > Evergreen Mitigation Bank wetlands SE of Philomath, and flushed an
> > AMERICAN BITTERN from a nest. Here's his description:
> >
> >> an American bittern jumped up between my legs and almost gave me a
> >> heart attack.  It had 5 mallard size eggs, which were a solid gray
> >> color. The nest was dead grass shaped into a shallow bowl on top very
> >> saturated soils.  It was in an area with some nitrogen runoff from the
> >> adjacent field out in the prairie dominated by almost head high Tufted
> >> hairgrass and meadow barley, ~200 yds west of the emergent marsh areas
> >> on the south side.
> >
> > He's also found a WILSON'S PHALAROPE nest in the same general area, also
> > two phalaropes predated by RED-TAILED HAWKS within the past week. GREAT
> > HORNED OWLS nested successfully at this site again this year, in the
> > riparian growth along Evergreen Creek.
> >
> > For directions to Evergreen Mitigation Bank, see Site A10 on the Alsea
> > Falls Loop of the Willamette Valley Birding Trail,
> > www.willamettebirding.org
> > The site is private land so you can't wander out into the restorations
> > on your own, but you can scan it from several pullouts on Bellfountain
> > Rd. The bittern and phalarope nests are straight out (west) from the
> > first pullout south of Evergreen Creek -- pretty far out but with luck
> > you might see or hear them flying around.
> >
> > Happy birding,
> > Joel
> >
> > --
> > Joel Geier
> > Camp Adair area north of Corvallis
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > birding at midvalleybirding.org
> > http://midvalleybirding.org/mailman/listinfo/birding
> > http://oregonbirdwatch.org/pipermail/obol/
> >
> 
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