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Ellsworth Creek Restoration Introduction

Along the west coast from northern California to Alaska one can find majestic forests that share features such as proximity to ocean waters and coastal mountains, a maritime climate and the ability to produce the world’s largest and oldest trees. These forests make up half of the world’s remaining coastal temperate rainforests. They share the distinction of being a globally rare and endangered ecosystem that continues to be threatened with the impacts of landscape conversion and incompatible logging practices.

In the Willapa Bay area of southwest Washington, The Nature Conservancy has embarked on an ambitious effort to protect and restore a highly productive and biologically diverse example of these forested systems. The Ellsworth Creek watershed is a low-elevation coastal rainforest ecosystem with remnant old-growth trees, a rich freshwater aquatic system, and direct connection to the fertile estuarine waters of Willapa Bay. Although much of the primary forests in Ellsworth Creek have been logged, biological inventories indicate that the area still harbors remnants of its historic biological diversity. The Conservancy is dedicated to making Ellsworth Creek a model for watershed conservation where an adaptive management process closely links active restoration and scientific investigation.

As of 2007, the Conservancy owns and manages approximately 3,009 hectares within the Ellsworth Creek Preserve, including essentially all of the 1,907 hectare Ellsworth Creek drainage basin. The Conservancy’s primary goals for the Ellsworth Creek Preserve include:

1. Managing the preserve with exemplary stewardship that earns respect and builds productive relationships within the local community and amongst resource management partners.
2. Restoring ecologically functional estuarine, freshwater, and upland forest habitats that support species and ecological processes representative of those found within unmanaged late-successional forest landscapes of the Pacific Northwest coast.
3. Developing and implementing restoration strategies that accomplish the ecological and partnership goals in a cost effective and financially replicable manner.
4. Maximizing opportunities for learning how coastal forest landscapes respond to restoration treatments and exporting those lessons to other forest resource managers.

For more information about the Ellsworth Creek project, please contact , Forest Ecologist, The Nature Conservancy.