Todd Lake restoration areas trampled upon

Some natural areas are more fragile than others and need to be left alone to grow. Unfortunately, not everyone respects that, even when the signs clearly ask for the public to steer clear.

At Todd Lake, west of Bend, despite signs that say the area is closed for restoration, some people visiting the lake went right by them anyway. A visitor posted a recent photo this week on Reddit’s Bend “subreddit,” sparking discussion of the issue.

Kassidy Kern, an information officer for the Deschutes National Forest, said Wednesday it’s important to remember just how fragile some of the ecosystems are in the Cascade lakes.

“We really are asking the public to respect those closure areas so that we can restore some of these very special places like at Todd Lake, with those high-elevation ecosystems that are so critical and so sensitive,” Kern said. “We need to give a little bit of extra-special care in those areas.”

It might seem like increased security measures, like a high fence, would be a good answer to the problem, but that’s not necessarily true.

“Part of what we’re trying to do is to balance wanting to educate the public with also not making the forest look like Times Square,” Kern said. “We don’t want to have large billboards, and we don’t want to have large fencing, because that really does impact your experience of the forest.”

So instead, there are short fences around these planted areas and signs asking people to respect them.

Another possible deterrent would be to dispatch patrol officers, but that’s not very feasible either.

“We have very few people in that capacity, so that’s not our preferred method of managing an issue like this,” Kern said. “Our preferred method is that people see the signs, respect the signs and back off and say, ‘We’re going to make a different choice.'”

If people don’t make that choice, all the work of seeding that area with new plants essential to the surrounding environment will have to be done again.