Restoring Rare Native Habitats in the Willamette Valley

Habitat in the Willamette valley ranges from pavement and concrete to pure, diverse native plant communities. Restoration, as used in this guide, means changing habitat conditions on a site to conditions more like the pre-European settlement habitat. It does not mean complete re-creation of pure native habitats. In fact, it is doubtful that this is possible on much of the private land in the Willamette Valley because so little is typically known about the original detailed habitat structure on a specific piece of property. Even if detailed information is available, the costs and technical requirements are often not practical for most landowners. What the practices in this guide will do is create some facsimile of the habitat that once occurred on the area. In creating some of the structure and/or composition of the habitat thought to have originally existed prior to conversion, many of the functions of that system will also have been reestablished. Figure 1 (below) demonstrates restoration as used in this guide. The goal is to restore habitat on a project site by moving it up and to the right on the native species/diversity line.