By Andy Neill December 2019 Fall is planting season, which means IAE’s restoration ecologists are in the midst of their busiest time of the year. Most of the restoration work that takes place the rest of the year is in preparation for planting and seeding each fall. This year, nearly 116,000 plants were planted and […]
Category Archives: Habitat Restoration Program
Restoring prairies: making a home for butterflies takes time!
By Ian Silvernail October 2019 Prairie habitat once existed extensively along the Oregon coast, most commonly occurring on stabilized dunes, headlands, salt-spray meadows, and on some coastal, montane peaks. Today, the few remaining coastal prairies are significantly degraded, and the loss of this habitat has resulted in a significant reduction in many of the animal […]
How IAE harvests native plants
By Michel Wiman October 2019 The United Nations General Assembly recently declared 2021-2030 the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, to “massively scale up the restoration of degraded and destroyed ecosystems as a proven measure to fight the climate crisis and enhance food security, water supply and biodiversity.” For the U.N. to recognize the importance of restoration […]
Farmland transformed to diverse habitats: Seven years of restoration at Herbert Farm & Natural Area
by Peter Moore September 2019 The Institute for Applied Ecology (IAE) has been helping restore Herbert Farm and Natural Area since 2012. Along the way, there has been valuable collaboration and funding by partners, including City of Corvallis (the landowner), Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Bonneville Power Administration, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Oregon […]
Taylor’s checkerspot – the fair weather butterfly
By Andy Neill May 2019 Location: Benton County (Site names and locations excluded to protect sensitive species and habitats) Many of you are probably familiar with the Fender’s blue butterfly (Icaricia icarioides fenderi), sometimes used as the poster child of prairie restoration in Oregon and rightfully so. It is likely that some of you have […]
Fender’s blue or silvery blue butterfly? And other entomological adventures
By Jessica Celis April 2019 IAE’s restoration ecologists tend to focus on plant communities. But this year, three of HR’s five restoration ecologists will shift their search image from plants to butterflies as they participate in the annual range-wide survey for Fender’s blue butterfly, which is funded each year by the US Fish and Wildlife […]
Four Reasons to Love Prairies
By Anna Ramthun February 2019 We talk a lot about prairie restoration at IAE. But why do we care about prairies? Why should you care about them? Although prairies don’t provide the obvious resources that forests do (no trees), and they do not provide the splashy benefits of wetlands (requiring folks to mitigate their losses), […]
Season’s Plantings
by Anna Ramthun December 2018 As the planting season and the year draw to end, we are feeling incredibly grateful for our volunteer base! With their help, the Habitat Restoration Program was able to plant 34,460 plugs, bulbs, trees, shrubs, and bare-root native plants this year. Of these, 4,885 were plugs of threatened and endangered […]
First Foods Celebration at Champoeg State Park
By Andy Neill October 2018 On Saturday October 13th, IAE staff took part in a cultural event at Champoeg State Heritage Area and State Park near Wilsonville, Oregon, that was the culmination of the efforts with our partners at Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde (CTGR) and Oregon Parks and Recreation Department (OPRD). The event […]
Gaining good ground at OSU Vegetable Farm
By Emily Wittkop, November 2018 IAE currently manages 66 restoration sites in Oregon and partners with agencies such as the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for plug and seed production. In order to produce seed for restoration, IAE has expanded our farm program to the Oregon State University […]
The Progress and the Peavine
by Anna Ramthun September 2018 The thinleaved peavine (Lathyrus holochlorus) is a climbing perennial forb, or non-grass, prairie wildflower. Native to Oregon and Washington, it depends on transitional habitats, like edges of prairie and oak savanna, fence rows, and roadsides, and woodland clearings. Appropriate habitat areas have declined drastically, as prairie and oak savanna ecosystems […]
Seasons of Herbert Farm Natural Area
By Anna Ramthun September 2018 The Herbert Farm Natural Area is undeniably special. Located just south of Corvallis, the area was an important gathering and foraging spot for local Native American tribes, and is still regarded as an important cultural area by the modern Confederated Tribes of the Grande Ronde. The Institute for Applied Ecology […]
Restoring Pioneer Butte, one stick at a time
By Andrew Esterson September 2018 Wow, what a day and what a great volunteer crew we had to help with the Institute for Applied Ecology’s (IAE) Pioneer Butte restoration project! First and foremost, thank you to all of the Oregon State University students that volunteered for IAE’s Pioneer Butte project with the Center for Civic […]
Tramplers, Stumblers and Rollers: Observations from our first 2 weeks as interns
By Samantha Hooper and Mary McKean May 1, 2018 The first two weeks of Conservation Research field work were an immersion in the spectacularly interconnected landscape of Oregon’s native and exotic plant life. We joined Andrew from IAE’s Habitat Restoration team at the West Eugene Wetlands for our first field day, where we mulched a […]
Volunteers help restore endangered Willamette daisy (Erigeron decumbens) at Baskett Slough National Wildlife Refuge
By Ashley Ottombrino-Haworth, April 2018 This spring, staff and volunteers from the Institute for Applied Ecology and US Fish and Wildlife Service teamed up to plant over 4100 Willamette daisy starts at Baskett Slough National Wildlife Refuge, 10 miles west of Salem, Oregon. Twenty-three total volunteers helped plant for this two-day field trip. The reason: […]