Just in from Neal Maine/ PacificLight Images.
“Winter Seeds” Towsend chipmunk with rose hips in the Gearhart Fen.(*)
Proceeds in support of NCLC.
Fairweather House and Gallery
October 2016
DRAMA IN ART.
With selected works by artist/writer Jo Pomeroy-Crockett Ph.D., artists Renee Rowe, Paul Brent, Jan Shield and photographer Linda Fenton-Mendenhall.
Introducing new photography about drama found in the coastal habitat “within steps from our own backyards” from Seaside/Gearhart naturalist and ecologist Neal Maine/PacificLight Images.
For more information please visit http://www.fairweatherhouseandgallery.com/artists
(*) reprinted article nclctrust.org/expanding-our-footprint-in-the-gearhart-fen/
The Gearhart Fen is the largest contiguous wetland of its kind remaining on the Oregon Coast. And it is now the location of North Coast Land Conservancy’s largest expanse of conserved lands. The Nature Conservancy’s Oregon office transferred a 466-acre conservation easement and ownership of 47.01 acres to NCLC. Together with two properties it already owned there, North Coast Land Conservancy is now the steward of some 533 contiguous acres of the fen—a type of quagmire that is similar to but, according to botanists, different from a bog.
This dynamic ecosystem is a mosaic of several rare wetland community types associated with sphagnum moss. Carnivorous sundew plants grow on the fen’s moist ground, luring insects with their bright red coloring. Songbirds migrate through the fen’s stunted pines, and swallows bring their young and teach them to feed. Ospreys nest here, bald eagles perch in the trees, and waterfowl rest on patches of open water. A herd of elk calls it home. The Gearhart Fen is located in a dune swale south of Cullaby Lake in the southeastern corner of the Clatsop Plains, east of US 101.