COEUR d’ALENE — While hiking in some places on Tubbs Hill, it’s impressive to see that a tall pine tree can find enough soil to take root and grow, and become a towering perch for osprey. The cataclysmic forces of the Missoula Floods scoured much of the soil away, leaving exposed rock in many places, with barely enough covering for a worm to hide.

COEUR d’ALENE — While hiking in some places on Tubbs Hill, it’s impressive to see that a tall pine tree can find enough soil to take root and grow, and become a towering perch for osprey.

The cataclysmic forces of the Missoula Floods scoured much of the soil away, leaving exposed rock in many places, with barely enough covering for a worm to hide.

Still, Tubbs Hill historically has given root to ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir trees, and some western larch, also called tamarack. The larch thrive where more moisture is found. While today all three of these tree types are found in the lakeside park in the midst of the city, there’s an imbalance among them.

The Coeur d’Alene Parks Department and others want to restore the natural balance, but it will take time.

“There aren’t many short cuts in forestry,” said Mark Weadick, a consulting forester and member of the Tubbs Hill Foundation.

Weadick and a group of others, including city forester Karen Haskew, hiked Tubbs Hill on Saturday morning to discuss plans to restore native habitat to the lakeside park in the midst of the city.

“The management plan is to have the hill as native as possible,” Haskew said.

Ponderosa pine numbers need to be increased, and the Douglas-fir has grown out of proportion, Haskew said. And in some areas non-native tree species — maple and cherry trees — have been taking over, she said.

The hike Saturday was a public information tour of the east and north sides of the 120-acre park, and gave people a chance to see the encroachment on native trees. About a dozen people showed up.

Non-native populations compete for space and sunlight with native trees, and since trees like ponderosa pine need sunlight to establish, they are at a disadvantage against shade-tolerant Douglas-fir, maple and cherry trees, she said.

The city’s urban forestry committee is recommending the city remove a couple hundred maple and cherry trees this summer in a 30-acre area in the north and east slopes of the hill, by the foot bridge and swinging bridge. The removal will be done in coordination with a forest-fire fuel reduction effort.

The stumps of the smaller targeted non-native trees would be chemically treated to prevent them from re-sprouting. Larger maple and cherry trees would be killed by a “hack and squirt” method, where a hatchet cuts open the tree and a harmful chemical is applied to the tree. This would happen in the late summer or early fall.

In the last six years, Weadick said more than 200 ponderosa pine trees have been planted on the north side of the park. Some were planted in an area burned in the 1990s, giving them a sunny area to take hold.

“Life is going to start getting better for them,” Weadick said of the ponderosa pine.

John Schwandt, a forest pathologist with the U.S. Forest Service, said the Douglas-fir at Tubbs Hill are being killed off by root rot.

“It’s a real headache for timber management folks,” Schwandt said of root rot.

The disease has been spreading quicker because of the unnaturally large numbers of Douglas-fir, and greater concentration of them in some stands. The result has been the death of many Douglas-fir trees during the last decade. Ponderosa pine are more resistant to root rot than Douglas-fir, Schwandt said.

He said nothing can be done to treat a tree with root rot.

Information: (208) 769-2266