The City’s quarter-time Watershed Specialist was let go, and forestry consultant Trout Mountain Forestry rescheduled a planned winter non-commercial thinning of early seral forest to happen during spring bird nesting season, after Corvallis halted all commercial logging after the same 2022 mistake. Rock Creek pipeline replacement work has begun, crossing under fish-bearing Rock Creek and Watkins Creek, the latter which is currently being routed through a pipe. Henkle Way, a county public road, has been closed without posted notice by city Public Works crews. Construction zone earthwork is not captured by sediment barriers into fish-bearing Watkins Creek. Corvallis continues to be a lousy neighbor outside of town, and plans to take even more flow from downstream Greasy Creek, which has long been popular fishing for local residents.
Before the Annual Tour, I noticed that someone had mowed part of the “Rocky Knoll” alongside Hwy 34 below the Rock Creek entrance gate, mowing down most all the state-endangered perennial peacock larkspur during blossoming. As part of the Stewardship Plan, Public Works trumpeted their exemplary management of this Prairie Conservation Area designated for this species. I reported the egregious “take” of this population to Oregon Department of Agriculture, and the loss will be noted in the annual report to USFWS as part of the 50-year Prairie Species Habitat Conservation Plan to which Corvallis and Benton County committed. I subsequently found out the mowing was done by Public Works staff.
On the Annual Public Tour, I did learn that city watershed specialist Jeff Hollenbeck would be leaving. Some counterfactuals I also learned that day were that using the current road system for logging adds no sediment to the streams, and not using these roads for logging would be “ridiculous” (TMF). In an area where I’d increment-cored trees averaging 320 years old in the early 1990s, both city representatives gauged a large overstory tree they pointed out as about 200 years old, and the very area we were standing in had burned during the ca. 1848 Yaquina fire. Time to unlearn! According to many accounts and records, that 450,000 acre fire burned westward from a line connecting Hoskins to Blodgett to Marys Peak, about 180 years ago. Twenty-year-old douglas-firs rarely survive a stand-replacement fire, and fire scars from that time in this portion of watershed are absent. The long absence of fire in the Rock Creek watershed is actually one reason why this stream has–until recent decades–been such a consistent and reliable source of drinking water for Corvallis!
Jim Fairchild