Regaining glory

Swaths of trees lining rivers and streams may one day lead the nation's largest estuary back closer to its earlier glory. Officials envision a cleaner, more productive Chesapeake Bay resulting from their plan to restore streamside, forests in the Bay's 64,000-square mile watershed.

The Chesapeake Executive Council - comprised of the governors of Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania; the mayor of the District of Columbia; and the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency - in October signed a commitment to restore 2,010 miles of streamside, or riparian, forest by the year 2010. In addition, they called for preserving existing streamside forests and ultimately putting some kind of vegetated buffer - preferably forests - along all 110,000 miles of rivers and streams that feed the Bay.

EPA Administrator Carol Browner, who chairs the Executive Council, called streamside forest restoration a "common sense, cost-effective way to keep pollution out of the rivers that flow into the Bay." Research has shown that these forests provide a wealth of benefits. Their shade moderates water temperature, roots stabilize streambanks, and fallen limbs and leaves provide habitat and food for stream-dwelling creatures. In addition, riparian forests filter pollutants out of both surface runoff and shallow groundwater before they can enter waterways. Interest in restoring riparian areas has grown around the country, but the Bay states are the first region to set a specific forest buffer-restoration goal.

Today trees line about 60 percent of the rivers and streams in the Chesapeake watershed. Forest buffer proponents hope to see more trees planted between streams and croplands, pastures, and subdivisions to soak up pollutants, especially nutrients, before they enter waterways. An excess of nutrients is one of the main problems facing the Bay; they spur algae blooms that block sunlight to important underwater grasses and, when algae die, they decompose in a process that depletes the water of oxygen needed by fish and other species.

When the first colonists described the Chesapeake's fish and shellfish as a boundless resource, the watershed that drained into the Bay was almost entirely forested. While those days will never return, many are hoping that forested bands several dozen yards wide along streambanks will mimic the water quality functions once performed by that vast blanket of trees.

"Just as people depend on water, rivers depend on woodlands," says Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge.

But reaching the 2,010-mile mark won't be easy. It will require planting about 150 miles of streamside forest a year - a rate three times faster than what is now taking place. Most of the streamside land in the watershed is privately owned, and restoring forest buffers can be more controversial than planting other buffers, such as grass strips. Farmers, for example, worry the trees will shade nearby fields and provide habitat for deer, raccoons, and other crop-devouring animals.

It was issues like that that kept a 31-member special task force of government officials, landowners, and scientists trying to develop the riparian forest buffer policy from agreeing on a specific restoration goal, even after two year's work. Some landowners feared a numeric restoration goal would ultimately lead to regulation.

The Executive Council is trying to reach its goal through incentives, such as sharing the cost with landowners. "I am very proud of this commitment," Browner said. "We believe that through a variety of tools, incentives, and voluntary programs, we can achieve what is perhaps the most far-reaching of such efforts in this country."

Karl Blankenship, editor of the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay's Bay Journal, wrote about riparian forests in the Spring 1996 issue.

COPYRIGHT 1997 American Forests
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning