Christmas Trees for Salmon, 2016
Do you think the Reedsport Community cares about Salmon? You bet they do…
Christmas Trees for Salmon is a South Coast Chapter project of the Coastal Conservation Association, Oregon which takes a lot of cooperation and help from the local Reedsport community to make it successful. This is our second year for this project. It started with the Lions Club and the Winchester Bay Market handing out fliers and promoting the project to Christmas tree buyers before the Holidays. Christmas Trees for Salmon was further promoted by the local Umpqua Post urging people to donate their trees and posters were placed in conspicuous locations throughout Reedsport and Winchester Bay.
Reedsport City Management allowed us to collect and stage Christmas Trees on city property adjacent to the Les Schwab parking lot. This made it easier and convenient for tree donators to drop off their trees and the area was kept neat by chapter volunteers throughout January.
Once ODF&W had secured required permits and the creek water was low, dates were chosen for tree placement. Ron Frakes, Reedsport Community Charter School Teacher, arranged a student field trip.
Wednesday morning at 8:00 AM on February 10th, ten South Coast Chapter members and the Reedsport High School students converged on the Christmas tree pile at the Les Swab parking lot and loaded approximately one hundred trees on five trailers. From there we headed for Buck Creek with a short detour for the student bus for donuts. Well, it IS forty five minutes to the creek!
We arrived in force at Buck Creek where ODF&W Biologists, Evan Leonetti and Eric Himmelreich were waiting for us. Evan and Eric discussed the advantages the trees provided for fish habitat with the students setting the stage for what was to come next. Everyone got busy unloading trees from the trailers and hauling them down to locations in Buck Creek. These trees were to augment work previously completed by ODF&W and other agencies. Numerous large trees had been crisscrossed in bends along the creek, and what appeared to be barriers, were no problems for fish to negotiate. However, the large trees did slow the water and enabled gravel to build-up around them.
from Pete’s Blog – PeteHeley.Com
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