Seeing the Forest

Seeing the Forest

Here is the link to David Bollier’s review of Seeing the Forest https://vimeo.com/125160364

Almost half of the world’s original forests have been cleared or degraded. So naturally, most people think of the “forest restoration” movement as an effort to re-plant these lost trees.

But it’s time to see restoration as more than just the trees.

Restoration is really about improving landscapes throughout the world that are deforested, degraded, or underutilized. Boosting the productivity of these landscapes helps take pressure off the world’s remaining forests while also providing a host of tangible benefits—from food security to clean water to carbon sequestration.

"Seeing the Forest" tells the story of how the Siuslaw became a restoration forest that successfully manages ecosystems while putting people to work. This 30-minute documentary film features partners, Forest Service staff and leadership, and Jim Furnish, past Siuslaw Forest Supervisor and retired Deputy Chief of the USFS, describing how the forest navigated the last several decades of changing federal forest practices in collaboration with a wide range of partners.

The Siuslaw National Forest and its partners began working with community members to restore the natural functions of the estuary to the benefit of the salmon, plants, birds, animals and people who call it home. Last week construction begins on an interpretive site north of Lincoln City that will help visitors and residents better understand the estuary’s significance and impact.

Residential and commercial development in the mid 1900s impacted the intertidal portion of the estuary. For more than 40 years the Siuslaw National Forest, with a diverse range of partners, has been acquiring tidal marsh in the estuary in order to bring back the tides. The estuary was restored incrementally from 1978 through 2017. Nearly the entire estuary is now restored to a natural, historic tidal regime, resulting in significant fisheries response and native biodiversity.

We're returning natural functions to altered landscapes, focusing on creating and maintaining healthy ecosystems: estuaries, old growth forests, meadows, coastal dunes. We are working to repair whole watersheds, across river basins, from ridge-top to the ocean.

Once widespread old growth forest, coastal meadow and estuary habitats steadily disappeared, converted to other uses, leading to ‘threatened and endangered listing’ of several species, including Northern spotted owl, marbled murrelet, coho salmon, snowy plover and silverspot butterfly.

Watersheds and ecosystems cover large areas, spanning many different land ownerships. Effective restoration must be a coordinated, cooperative effort, engaging neighbors to address habitat problems together. The complexity, size and expense of this type of restoration are beyond the capacity of any one person or organization.

Partnerships are key to this effort. Unprecedented agreements between agencies, universities and community members emerged to implement the work of restoration. Scientific research, technical expertise and collaboration ingenuity can produce a new model of restoration that will benefit ecosystems and communities for years to come.

The Siuslaw Watershed Council supports sound economic, social and environmental uses of natural and human resources in the Siuslaw River Basin. The Council encourages cooperation among public and private watershed entities to promote awareness and understanding of watershed functions by adopting and implementing a total watershed approach to natural resource management and production.