PORT ANGELES — Joshua Chenoweth, Olympic National Park botanical restorationist, will tell about revegetation plans along the Elwha River during a lecture at Peninsula College on Thursday.
He will speak as part of the Studium Generale program at 12:35 p.m. in the Little Theater at the college at 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd.
Admission to the lecture is free.
Removal of the Glines Canyon and Elwha dams began in September as part of a $325 million restoration project to return the river to its wild state.
The Elwha Dam is expected to be completely removed in the next month while the Glines Canyon Dam, originally 210 feet tall, has been notched down by about 40 feet.
Once the dams are demolished and the lakes behind them gone, the exposed banks of the Elwha will be replanted with more than 400,000 native plants.
“This is a unique project that provides the world with information important to future dam removal decisions and places Port Angeles and Olympic National Park at the forefront of ecosystem restoration research and management,” Chenoweth said.
Planning for the revegetation began in 1993, with actual native seed collected from the Elwha watershed in 2001. Revegetation will continue until at least 2017.
Chenoweth has worked for Olympic National Park since 2001.
He received his master’s degree from the College of Forests Resources at the University of Washington in 2007 with a focus in restoration ecology.
He is the primary author of the 2008 Restoration and Revegetation Plan for Lake Mills and Lake Aldwell and has been serving as the technical lead for the Elwha revegetation project since 2007.
For details on other upcoming Studium Generale programs, visit www.pencol.edu or www.facebook.com/PeninsulaCollege.
