Plan Unveiled For Restoration Of Heyburn Trees Park’s Cottonwoods And Pines Would Get Protection From Fire

These are dark days for the black cottonwoods that outline the St. Joe River at Heyburn State Park. They’re disappearing.

On Wednesday, park manager Fred Bear unveiled an ambitious 20-year plan to restore not only the cottonwoods but the white pines and ponderosa pines on the hillsides of Idaho’s oldest state park.

The existing white pines are among the relative few in the state that survived the ravages of blister rust disease. More of them will be planted in appropriate clearings, according to the park’s plan.

Making the ponderosa pines vigorous will involve setting ground-level fires in some areas. Such “prescribed fires” will create more open stands that are less vulnerable to wildfires, Bear said.

“That’s my biggest concern for Heyburn State Park: How do we fight a fire? How do we prevent it?” he said.

Fire has been unnaturally suppressed for 60 or 70 years, he said. Before, fires swept through every 15 years.

The park’s natural resource plan also calls for thinning overgrown thickets of trees. Bear said the logging will be “low impact.”

“We want to be in and out, so in two years you won’t even know we were in there,” he said.

Bear promised there would be no clearcutting and plenty of public involvement.

“We cut no tree for its timber value,” added Rick Cummings, regional manager for the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation. “But if we cut it, we’ll get as much for it as we can.”

The presentation was made to members of the four-county Natural Resources Committee.

Heyburn State Park lies within Benewah County, at the southern end of Lake Coeur d’Alene. Some 2,500 of its 8,000 acres are under water. That includes part of the St. Joe River channel, which has long been marked by rows of cottonwoods that appeared to march into the lake.

But cottonwoods that die aren’t being replaced. They haven’t regenerated for 50 years, since the level of the Post Falls Dam was raised and water backed up into the St. Joe. That has interrupted the natural rhythm of the river that’s required for the cottonwoods to reproduce.

Cottonwood seeds will be gathered, Bear said, and grown into seedlings in a nursery. Those will be hand-planted in the along the river.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Map of Heyburn State Park area