Forest Restoration Plan Environmental Assessment - Fort Clatsop Unit

The purpose of this project is to restore and rehabilitate recently purchased industrial second and third-growth forest lands within the Fort Clatsop Unit at Lewis and Clark National Historical Park to forests that more closely approximate the structure, ecology, and appearance of forests in 1805-1806.

This project is needed to restore and re-create forests representative of those experienced by the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

The park's 1995 General Management (GMP) and Environmental Impact Statement recommended purchasing forest lands adjacent to the fort site and restoring them to an approximation of historic conditions: "The proposed boundary expansion would provide protection of the forested and agricultural landscape now surrounding the Fort area and, by practicing forest management on some of the land included, would allow a return to a forest landscape representative of that experienced by the Corps of Discovery." (p.46)

In 2002, Congress passed the Fort Clatsop National Memorial Expansion Act and
added the forest lands proposed for acquisition in the GMP - approximately 963 acres - to the Fort Clatsop Unit

The industrial forest lands the park acquired are significantly different in appearance and ecology to unmanaged forest stands experienced by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The trees within each stand are young, densely stocked and of the same age. Unmanaged stands would have been older, less dense, and contained trees of different ages. Perhaps the greatest difference between plantations and the historical forest is the forest floor. In many places, the Expedition journals describe a forest floor so thickly covered with fallen logs, shrubs and ferns, that it is almost impassable. For example, on November 12th, Clark wrote that his hunting party "found the woods So thick with Pine & timber and under groth that they could not get through". On December 1, 1805, Lewis remarked that "the wood was so thick it was almost impenetrable." Plantations are managed to allow access for machinery and timber crews. As a consequence, the understory of ferns and shrubs, downed trees, thick soils, snags and nurse logs that characterized the historic forest is often missing from plantations.

A substantial body of scientific research suggests that converting stands from tree farms to natural forests requires active and strategic intervention. Without intervention, these stands can remain in the same developmental stage for decades, if not centuries. Research suggests that intervention is necessary to increase structural and biological complexity, introduce greater species diversity, create snags and downed logs, restore forest soils and the forest floor, and create a more natural forest understory. Productive, lowland ecosystems such as those found in the Fort Clatsop unit are very resilient, and responsive to manipulation. While it is not possible to restore the forests present during the time of Lewis and Clark in a generation, treatment can greatly accelerate the conversion from plantation to native forest.

This project is needed now because several of the younger forest stands in the Fort Clatsop Unit are in a critical window where treatment is extremely effective.

This plan only addresses the forest and forest floor within the Fort Clatsop Unit and does not address forests at Dismal Nitch, Station Camp, the Yeon Unit or Cape Disappointment.

Document Content:

No files have been uploaded for this document.