Volunteers trekked to a remote portion of Mill Creek near Adna this week to help plant thousands of young trees for a project led by the Lewis Conservation District.
Kelly Verd, senior projects coordinator with the district, gathered staff and volunteers along Mill Creek on Thursday morning.
The team of nine people made up of conservation district staff and volunteers planted around 6,000 young trees along the banks of the small and winding Chehalis River tributary by the end of the day in an attempt to eradicate invasive canary grass, create habitat for native fish and attract other wildlife essential to long-term fish habitat.
The planting day is part of a multi-year, grant-funded project that in total will plant more than 20,000 trees along nearly 3,000 feet of stream buffer around Mill Creek where it passes through timber land owned by the Northwest-based timber company Port Blakely.
The district has participated in many tree-planting projects before, but according to Verd, this one is different and is serving as a type of pilot or test run. The main goal of the project is to attract wildlife such as beavers, which are essential to the natural processes that make small tributary streams perfect habitat for spawning salmon and trout species.
“We want to shade the stream, too, but we're actually planting this specifically to bring in wildlife,” Verd said.
Some may ask why the district is planting so many trees.
According to Verd, the hope is to plant enough trees to out-compete the invasive canary grass along the creek and survive consumption by deer and beavers.
The project is designed as an alternative to another type of project growing in popularity where teams have constructed artificial beaver dams or added large bits of wood chained into a stream to imitate fallen trees.
This project seeks to achieve the goal naturally by planting trees to attract beavers that can make those same dams and blockages that shelter salmon all by themselves.
“We could just bring in beavers without doing the beaver dam analogs,” Verd said. “Because, you know, that was the newer project that everybody was doing.”
In the short- to mid-term, the new trees will begin to provide shade for the water, keeping it cool in the summers and providing food for wildlife. In the long-term, some will fall into the stream during storms thanks to rot or with help from native beavers, creating perfect spawning pools for salmon and slowing water flows during flood season.
Six volunteers, five Port Blakely staff and one well known fish advocate and nearby landowner, Bob Russell, joined three Lewis Conservation District staff members, including Verd, for the planting event. They planted 3,000 willow trees — some rooted and some staked that will take root on their own — along with a variety of other young trees and shrubs well suited for the inundated soil.
Last year, volunteers and crews planted approximately 14,500 trees and shrubs, including dogwood and cottonwood, but mostly consisting of willows — a hardy and water-loving tree. Willows can be planted easier than most trees by simply sticking a short stake or bit of a willow branch into the ground.
This is the second year volunteers have come out to Mill Creek to help plant young trees along the stream. But the project started much earlier. Verd began talking about it with her colleagues roughly five years ago and around the same time contacted Port Blakely through the company's Director of Wildlife and Environmental Policy Claudine Reynolds.
Reynolds was among the Port Blakely volunteers to come and help plant trees both this year and last year.
The pitch for the idea was to plant new trees around the stream in what is called a stream buffer area where Port Blakely legally cannot harvest trees. Verd’s team found aerial photos that show the buffer has been planted with canary grass at least since 1996 and likely earlier before Port Blakely took over ownership of the large stand of timber.
Verd applied for grants in 2023 and, with luck, the project was funded on its first try through the Aquatic Species Restoration Program under the Office of Chehalis Basin and the state's Salmon Recovery Funding Board.
The two state-funded groups focused on fish habitat restoration have ponied up $157,300 for the project, which Verd said mostly funds purchasing trees and paying staff to plant and maintain them.
The project has actually accomplished more than expected. This year's additional tree planting is an expansion of the original project after Verd and her team at the Lewis Conservation District found that they still had grant funds left over for planting. That allowed them to significantly increase the range of the project, planting trees over more than 1,000 additional feet of stream buffer.
Now that the bulk of the trees are planted, Verd said the next steps are maintenance and managing the growth of the invasive canary grass in order to give the trees enough of a head start. Staff has already fenced off some portions of the area to ensure some of the more fragile trees survive. Staff will also return to cut back or spray the invasive canary grass when needed.
The project is also one of a larger campaign focusing on restoring fish habitat along Mill Creek, which flows down toward state Route 6, following the route from Littell to Claquato before emptying into the Chehalis River.
One of the earlier projects on Mill Creek was one done on Russell’s property. Russell has in the last few years become dedicated to spending his time on salmon habitat.
For previous reporting by The Chronicle on Mill Creek salmon projects, visit https://tinyurl.com/n8kkzw4m.
