Habitat Restoration November 2017

Geese, Periwinkle, Plantings and More!

Do you remember the aerial conversations of the cacklers as they fly in their ill-formed formations? My head must have been too full of bulrush and blackberry to remember at first. With the first set of heavy clouds came the first sets of geese and a flood of memories. Now I remember! And the geese, after all, is why we toil so diligently. Our refugees!

This month, I found bulrush in Ruddy and Canvasback wetlands! It may have been the latest in the season bulrush was ever found. I wonder what the geese think?

Meanwhile, in our volunteer work parties, we’ve been pulling barbed wire and fence posts to open up corridors for our second most famous refugee, Columbia white-tailed deer. I suspect, as the deer become re-acclimated to the discordant geese they’ll do so whilst administering new trails to and fro.

Periwinkle (vinca minor) is a beautiful flowering ground cover native to Europe and was, no doubt, introduced onto the Carty Unit long before the vision of geese haven was under way. It’s an ornamental with some medicinal properties as an alkaloid. However, it is also voracious and has nearly blanketed a half-acre of shady hillside. Its only competition under pears and oaks are Himalayan blackberry brambles. In the past, vinca minor has snickered at our attempts to eradicate it with herbicide. So we’ve co-opted our volunteers’ elbow grease. We’ve been pitch forking and hori horing it by the roots! We’ve hefted bags and bags of it. There are many, many more bags yet to come. In the meantime, we’d love to replant something more native to supplant the vinca minor and add to the native flora and diversity on the Refuge. If you have any ideas, or any donations of weed-free kinnikinnik (which is also a palindrome) and/or inside-out flower, we can have the geese begin drafting ‘thank you’ cards.

Looking forward, we’re entering planting season! We’re going to be installing camas bulbs on the Oaks to Wetlands trail, just past the Plankhouse. We also hope to be planting some Oregon Ash trees on the River ‘S’ Unit, right along the Auto Tour Route. Finally, we’ll continue pulling barbed wire fencing and vinca minor and that familiar migrating water fowl pond party of whoops, quacks, and honks will be our sound track. You should join us!