LITTLE BOSTON — Over the past few weeks, both tribal and Resource Renewal workers have braved all sorts of weather, getting their hands dirty planting seedlings over 113 acres of tribal land bordering Hansville Road.
One-year-old Douglas firs and red cedars are being planted throughout an area that was logged last year to pay off the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe’s loan, which was used to purchase the property.
“Cutting trees down is part of the business,” said tribal planning director Joe Sparr. “Being environmentally friendly is also part of the business. We have exceeded standards that Weyerhaeuser uses. That’s money in pocket the tribe could have used, but they made the decision. Environmental and cultural values are also really important here.”
A grand total of 46,000 trees have made their way into Little Boston’s soil in the last two weeks, about 400 per acre, which is twice the minimum requirement for replanting, said Mike Cronin, who is working as a contract forester for the tribe.
The tribe purchased the 390-acre property from the Washington State Department of Natural Resources in November 2004 for $4.3 million. DNR logged a portion of the land about 25 years ago, replanting it with trees that were logged during summer and fall 2006, Cronin said.
The Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe decided to leave more than half of the site’s trees untouched, including almost all of the old growth trees that were undisturbed during the previous logging, he said. Old growth trees deemed dangerous were felled.
“Eyes gravitate to all the logged areas, they don’t see the other areas that have been left up,” Cronin said of some of the concerns raised when the trees were logged. Also, much of the area logged was next to the road, so it was more visible, he said.
The tribe has invested $20,000 in the replanting process, Sparr said, and he’s hoping it will help allay concerns raised by neighbors and other communities. In the next couple of years, most of the seedlings will grow to a visible height from the road, and people will forget the area was ever logged, Cronin said.
“Within five years, they will have grown five to six feet, and then they’ll grow two feet every year after that,” he said. “In five to 10 years, people will start seeing a difference.”
Resource Renewal, owned by John Haas and operated out of Jefferson County, has been tackling some of the replanting work, while a crew of tribal members have done the rest. The seedlings came from Hood Canal Nurseries, which collects seeds from local sites, cutting down on the potential for invasive species establishing themselves on the property, Cronin said.
“This has always been a part of the plan,” Sparr said of the replanting. “We were always going to use this land for tree growing.”
“I think people are just so used to seeing logging followed by development,” Cronin said. “That’s not the case, and these seedlings will prove it in the next couple of years.”
