This is a landscape-scale terrestrial restoration project in the North Fork Smith River watershed area. Activities include: plantation thinning, wildlife habitat enhancement, invasive plant treatments, and road improvements.
The overall purpose of the North Fork Smith restoration project is to accelerate the development of late successional forests; restore resilience and ecological integrity to the aquatic resources; and to provide resulting goods and services from these activities, which would be supported by an environmentally sustainable road system.
In summary, there is a need to:
- Accelerate the development of late successional reserve (LSR) and old-growth habitat and decrease fragmentation, which is a result of historic clearcutting, to improve habitat for LSR and old-growth dependent species.
- Maintain or improve aquatic ecosystems by restoring degraded physical and biological stream
- processes.
- Reduce the extent and rate of spread of invasive plants and help prevent new infestations in the project area.
- Provide resulting goods and services through restoration activities, which would be supported by an environmentally sustainable road system.
The project proposes to conduct thinning harvest (~4,113 acres); gap creation (166 acres, up to one- acre in size); underplanting (western redcedar, bigleaf maple, and pacific yew ) in gaps
[1], operational areas, and portions of thinned areas < 70 trees per acre (TPA); snag and downwood creation (up to 5/acre); instream log placement (~17 miles of streams using ~ 1,190 plantation trees and ~ 130 mature trees from along USFS roads; riparian tree felling (~ 20 miles streams); riparian tree planting (~ 5 miles of streams); integrated weed management using manual, mechanical (~200 acres), and herbicide (~250 acres) treatments (including an early detection, early response strategy); road decommissioning (~ 16 miles), road closure/storage (~10.4 miles), and decommissioning of abandoned roads (~40 miles) and culverts (~40 stream crossing and ~30 ditch relief cross drains). In addition, the Baldy Mountain Quarry would be reopened for road work and USFS Road 4800-022 would be stored/closed by installing a gate at the junction of USFS Road 4800 to limit access, protect natural resources, yet allow for future management.
[1] Gaps in the NF Smith project area would retain 3-7 center trees, the primary purpose of which is to develop clumps/clusters of wolfy trees that may provide future MAMU nesting habitat, similar to confirmed MAMU nest stand conditions recently documented in Siuslaw NF. A wolfy tree generally features a lower, well-developed spreading crown and branch structural complexity that could potentially support nesting habitat for multiple wildlife species, including MAMU nest platforms.
