Sean C. Morgan
The South Santiam Youth Watershed Council, the Sweet Home High School Forestry Club and Foster Elementary School will begin opening up Foster Forest this school year.
The project will take a couple of years, but in the end it will feature gravel paths, with a bench at the center of the small forested area between the Foster School ball field and Highway 20.
The area includes a variety of vegetation, a stand of maples and other deciduous trees, an open area overgrown with blackberries from the field to the highway and a conifer forest.
Underneath the trees are some native species mixed with numerous invasive species that Youth Watershed Council members will work to remove.
The area is kind of a “hangout” spot for people in the community, said Foster Principal Luke Augsburger. but there are times when he walks it and finds blankets and trash,
‘This is basically overgrown with blackberries and weeds. We want to take the area, clean it out, get rid of the underbrush and reassess the situation. There’s some nice trees in there that we would like to showcase.”
Angela Clegg, Youth Wastershed Council coordinator, said the area has potential.
“I’ve always looked at that space out there and said, they need to do something,”
The forest includes Douglas fir, maples and likely hemlock, alder and cottonwood, Clegg said. Native species in the area include Oregon grape, Oregon rose and snow berries.
Long term, the project could connect with the effort to run a trail system from the western part of Sweet Home to the National Forest.
The Youth Watershed Council will work with Dustin Nichol’s high school Forestry Club to get anything invasive out of the area, Clegg said.
The council will replace invasive species with native species, she said. The biggest issues are blackberries and ivy, which is climbing a handful of trees.
It’s a big project, Clegg said, and it will take a couple of years to eliminate the massive blackberry patch.
The blackberry patch is divided by a path.
The crews will remove blackberries between the path and Foster School before removing the blackberries between the path and Highway 20, which can be seen to the left while approaching the railroad trestle eastbound.
Clegg said she needs to coordinate with the participants to get things rolling this year and she is attempting to win restoration grants to help pay for the improvements.
“We’re doing this at no cost to the district,” Augsburger said.