The North San­ti­am Water­shed Coun­cil would like to thank the Arbor Day Foun­da­tion and the Bon­neville Envi­ron­men­tal Foun­da­tion for their gen­er­ous native plant dona­tions. We dis­trib­uted these plants to res­i­dents with­in our water­shed whose prop­er­ties were affect­ed by the 2020 wild­fires and their tes­ti­monies are shared here. Thank you for sup­port­ing our com­mu­ni­ty and our mission! 

My fam­i­ly would like to thank you for help­ing us replant our beloved Nia­gara. Our fam­i­ly lost 3 of our homes in Nia­gara dur­ing the Beachie Creek Fire.… along with near­ly every tree and shrubs. Our grand­chil­dren, who lost their home in Nia­gara, are the 6th gen­er­a­tion to call it home. We love the vio­lets, Ladys­lip­pers, Elder­ber­ries, Cas­cara trees.… oh my, the list goes on and on. 

“Huge thank you’s to you, the North San­ti­am Water­shed Coun­cil and the Arbor Day Foun­da­tion for help­ing us to bring back the beau­ty and health of the Elkhorn area we love so much. See­ing it go from a lush rain­for­est to char and ash was total­ly heart-break­ing after the past 60 years that my fam­i­ly and neigh­bors swam, had pic­nics, hiked and gar­dened there! I now feel a glim­mer of hope that we can bring back the plants and ani­mals that thrived in the area as we have. Again.…immense grat­i­tude and thank you’s for the much need­ed help! 

There was a lot of loss and heart­break see­ing our home and all the homes that were dev­as­tat­ed along the lit­tle north fork of the san­ti­am. It has been a hard win­ter of watch­ing and wait­ing to see what trees are still alive after the burn. One thing that has been real­ly heal­ing for me, as we wait to rebuild, is to be able to pour a lot of love into the land. Our hill­side into the riv­er had always been cov­ered in black­ber­ries, and because it was so steep it felt impos­si­ble to tack­le. The burn cre­at­ed a small win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty for us to stay on top of the black­ber­ries and give native plants a few sea­sons to get estab­lished. We have plant­ed 200 native plants so far, a major­i­ty of which were donat­ed by the North San­ti­am Water­shed Coun­cil. It was a game chang­er for our hill­side as we had only been able to afford to pur­chase a hand­ful from else­where. The plants we received from NSWC were pret­ty big and gives us a great head start on repair­ing the land and pro­tect­ing our rivers. It has been heal­ing for our land and for our hearts. 

I want to acknowl­edge the kind­ness and the very time­ly dona­tion of the plants and trees you have pro­vid­ed to the fam­i­lies in our area affect­ed by the wild­fires this past Sep­tem­ber. It was a bright spot in a very gloomy Win­ter. My hope is for a mod­er­ate weath­er Sum­mer that would allow this veg­e­ta­tion to take root and survive. 

The plants you were able to pro­vide have been plant­ed along the banks of the creeks and in the for­est. We were so excit­ed to replant the area! I spent days crawl­ing around plant­i­ng and now I watch as things are com­ing back to life. We have a long way to go before it will be a beau­ti­ful diverse for­est but the plants you pro­vid­ed gave the for­est a great start. In addi­tion, to the plants you pro­vid­ed we pur­chased thou­sands of trees to refor­est the areas that were burned, as of today we have plant­ed over 5,000 trees Val­ley Pine, White and Red Cedar, Noble fir and Dou­glas fir. We think we will still have vine maples and big leaf maples to round off a diverse forest­ed property. 

Thank you again for the dona­tion of trees and plants we were able to acquire for our prop­er­ty, we lost sev­er­al dur­ing the San­ti­am Fires and appre­ci­ate the gen­eros­i­ty and are very grate­ful we have been able to replant and along the riv­er where most of the fire con­sumed our trees and veg­e­ta­tion. Thank you again! 

Thank you so much for the tree and shrub seedlings. We have 7 acres at the end of North Fork Rd that burned and we real­ly miss the green. My hus­band and I were able to get over 200 of the trees and shrubs pro­vid­ed through the North San­ti­am Water­shed Coun­cil. They all got plant­ed fair­ly quick­ly. My sore mus­cles are a tes­ta­ment to the work. Our soil is very rocky but we had lots of veg­e­ta­tion pre­vi­ous­ly so I am hope­ful that in a cou­ple of years we will once again have trees and shrubs. It is hard to tell that we have plant­ed now so we will be watch­ing and get­ting excit­ed as things grow. I real­ize that this num­ber is just a drop in the buck­et for the amount of land we have but your dona­tion has made a good start for us. As we get more of the area cleaned up we will be plant­i­ng many more trees in the future. Thank you so much! 

We look for­ward to see­ing the trees grow and thrive on our acreage in Lyons. We plant­ed these along the road where scotch­b­room and black­ber­ries used to block the traf­fic. The trees are a huge upgrade. 🙂 Thank you so much for your efforts in help­ing these trees find homes in the canyon.