BY BOB REES



The payoff came one evening last spring, after supper, as Ernestine Neitzel tossed the dirty dishwater outside. She heard singing.

It had been 30 years of quiet, and suddenly they were back -- and croaking.

"The frogs used to be so loud that our children had a hard time going to sleep," says Neitzel, 89.

The return of the Pacific tree frogs signaled a turning point. After more than a century of draining, clearing and cultivation as a working farm, the 23 acres off the highway near Cannon Beach Junction could be wetland habitat again.

The pasture already had changed shape. The upside-down spruce and hemlock trees, with root wads poking in all directions about 20 feet high, were embedded in the ground next to the edge of a pond as perches for birds. Overgrown blackberries have been yanked and replaced by native plants.





Now, the sounds of the wetlands had returned.

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Herb and Ernestine Neitzel bought the Clatsop County land along with its 1929 farmhouse for $4,000 cash on Valentine's Day more than 60 years ago, first raising milk cows for the Tillamook County Creamery Association, then cattle and even mink at one time.

Ernestine had grown up on a farm less than half a mile away. Its fertile soil produced bounteous crops for the family, none more memorable than flavorful Necanicum peas, a variety that disappeared long ago. The farm disappeared, too. Its topsoil eventually was sliced off and sold, leaving the site suited for development such as the trailer park it has become.

That might've been why the idea took root. Ernestine wanted the place where she'd settled as a young bride, raised a son and two daughters, lost a husband and grown old herself to follow an entirely different course.

Her son, Les Neitzel, who lived in nearby Seaside, would help



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Doug Ray picked up his phone and dialed Ernestine Neitzel.

He'd driven past her pastureland for years on his way to and from his Seaside home, but didn't know her.

Could he plant some trees?

A wetlands restoration consultant, Ray persuaded her to allow him to plant spruce trees in place of the alders along her reach of the

. A federal grant, the

, financed it. For two years Ray and a crew from Restoration Enhancement and Learning, a program for disabled adults to help restore habitat, planted.

Five years and thousands of trees later, the initial project became a springboard. When Ray learned a second round of federal grant money was available, he thought of the Neitzel farm. But he had a more ambitious project in mind. His expanded conservation plan would benefit the entire stream system, from wild coho to lamprey to native frogs, as well as animals such as the elk that grazed in the pasture each winter. Ernestine was in. The proposal won the $160,000 grant, as well as an additional $25,000 in Oregon lottery funds for riverside plantings.

Today, a cool stream runs through the land. Buried for decades to make way for farming, the water bubbled back after workers dug through layers of topsoil and gray clay. A dike still keeps the mainstem Necanicum River out, with a narrow man-made ditch that connects the off-channel alcove to the river, which dumps into the Pacific.

Elk graze; great horned owls and red-tailed hawks perch on the root balls of the upside-down trees as they hunt for rodents; and thousands of wild coho juveniles escape strong winter currents and feed before heading the last few miles to the Pacific Ocean.

The restoration is a model for other property owners who live in flood plains, says Joe Sheahan, stream restoration coordinator for the

who co-designed the site. The land can't be developed for much else under today's laws. A landowner gets help to make improvements for habitat. Wildlife, including those listed as endangered, can gain a foothold.

"It restores form and function to the river, including flood capacity, without negative impacts to the landowner," Sheahan says. It's a grass-roots effort to meet the needs of all of the state. The project won the

from the State Land Board in 2009.

The project remains a work in progress. The last wetland leg was completed in fall, and plantings are slated to be finished by April. Then, Ernestine Neitzel will donate 21 acres for a permanent conservation easement through the North Coast Land Conservancy. Her son, a full-time logger who worked side by side with crews through the restoration, will help maintain the wetlands, keeping invasive weeds at bay.

Neitzel wants to live out her days on the farm, paying property taxes on the house, barn and two acres she kept.

"Mrs. Neitzel's long-term vision for the property will leave a lasting legacy," Sheahan says. "She pioneered these lands, knowing what it looked like before the farmland modifications, and wants to see it return that way."

It will take generations to fully re-create the spruce forest swamp ecosystem this once was, even with a carefully sculpted project such as this.

Still, the native frogs are back. And singing.

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