Maintenance and Stewardship - Project Planning and Management for Ecological Restoration - page 181

FIGURE 11-3. A boardwalk in this coastal dune complex has controlled wandering over the dunes, allowing
vegetation to reestablish. Carmel, California. (Photo by John Rieger.)
Fencing and boardwalks function to control or influence where and how humans access a site.
Several creative solutions have been devised for widely different ecosystems (fig. 11-3). Depending
on the habitat, some pathways may provide the only access into the site. Fencing is usually not
needed in these situations. It may be necessary to control access to vehicles while permitting pe-
destrian access using various gate and pole arrangements.
An interesting situation occurred on one of our sites where we were developing habitat for
an endangered bird species. The site is approximately fifty acres and planted predominantly
with willows ( Salix spp.) and a few other appropriate riparian species. The site is adjacent to a
mature riparian forest area. The region had undergone a period of five years with subnormal
rainfall, and all of the naturally occurring riparian systems were stressed. The trees' reaction to
this stress was to drop limbs, which limited the amount of leafing. This resulted in a more open
canopy, a condition favorable to the insect pest known as the flat-head borer beetle, which
exists in low numbers in normal systems but tends to increase in number when the canopy
opens. The newly planted site was extremely attractive to the beetle, and we discovered that
many of the willows had become infected. An entomologist consulted with us on this problem.
We learned that there is no known insecticide to control the pest. The only thing that limits