September 14, 2019 City of Cannon Beach Hearing Kathleen Sayce, PO Box 91, Nahcotta WA 98637 360-665-5292
[email protected] Brief background: As an ecologist, I have lived on this coast and studied the ecology of dune fields for several decades, from Manzanita, OR north to Point Grenville, on the southwest side of the Olympic Mountains. The beaches of Clatsop Plains and the Long Beach Peninsula are closest to me and most intensively studied. My career includes: teaching college classes on ecology and stewardship; science officer, ShoreBank Pacific; science program director, the Willapa Alliance; wetland delineations; mitigation design and monitoring; forest ecological assessments; harmful algal bloom monitoring; noxious weed ecology; and restoration design and monitoring. Testimony, September 14, 2019—Dunes and plant diversity: Dune planting recommendations that include only one species and, too often, a species that is not native, makes it clear that recent tradition is in the lead, and not good ecological restoration practices. Monocultures can be insidiously pleasing to the eye, think field of wheat, or green lawn, but they hide a lack of faunal habitat among those green leaves. Only the most generalist faunal species thrive in these monocultures. I recommend that the city of Cannon Beach plant beachgrass, and then seed this area with native grass and wildflower species. Help nature decide what should grow where by bringing in species that should have been in the dunes all along. In the decades that I have walked dunes, I have seen American dunegrass, Leymus mollis, and a dozen other native species growing among Atlantic beachgrasses on dozens of miles of dunes in Clatsop County.