As a Metro scientist, Kate Holleran sees nature's biggest challenges and most glorious surprises – and she has the muddy boots to prove it. Read her latest reflections on restoring the land protected by Metro's voter-approved Natural Areas Program.
By Kate Holleran, Metro Scientist
Conserving nature, one acre at a time
Although planting season ended back in March, for worrywarts like me, it lasts all year long. Flooding, freezing, drought, deer browsing, mice girdling, nutria chomping, beaver clipping, elk trampling, grass competing, weed shading – the list of threats that can kill a newly planted seedling is long. So after our Metro contractors are done planting, we start monitoring survival.
Occasionally we do formal survival surveys, but often we just walk through a natural area, getting an ocular estimate of the survival and mortality of our newly planted trees and shrubs. It usually takes three to five years to establish a native plant community, and fortunately we have a large box of tools to help the native plants. We plant thousands of seedlings, then keep cutting Scotch Broom, mowing grass, pulling tansy, spraying knotweed, fencing away beaver, netting out mice and deer, placing protective tubing around white oak and repeating as needed.
A colleague and I walked through several planting sites last week and took the pulse of the growing season. We found a bright green flush of new needles on the conifers, shrubs popping with tender leaves, and some baldhip roses that were actually blooming – in their first season!
Along North Abbey Creek, the pesky elk had pulled the protective netting off of seedlings and trampled shrubs. In Baker Creek, beavers wiped out some plantings by building dams that caused flooding. And in many places, grasses and weeds were rapidly growing, overtopping some plantings. But, overall, the challenges of life in the wild haven’t been too tough yet. Let’s see what happens during the hot days of August.