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Restoration
For Val Rogers, few sights are sweeter than a plant thriving in its native environment. As she surveys the South Meadow of the Howard Buford Recreation Area near Mount Pisgah, Rogers — a smooth-faced woman with short brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses — squats to admire a pretty purple-flowered legume. "Wow. The lupin here is looking great," she gushes. "This is going to be glorious in a month or so!" Rogers, the volunteer coordinator for Friends of Buford Park and Mt. Pisgah (FBP), turns to a cottonwood sapling growing in a restored river channel. She handles it like a mother examining her baby's fingers, cooing over the tree's perfect little spade-shaped leaves, stroking their cottony undersides. "Finally lookin' good!" she says gleefully. The proliferation of plants like lupin and cottonwood, native to the Willamette Valley, is a sign that restoration efforts are making headway. "But we've got to be vigilant," adds Rogers, noticing a jagged leaf poking up beside the lupin. "Look what else is trying to get a foothold." The offending plant is blackberry, one of the area's most persistent invasive species. There are dozens of nonprofit groups working to restore natural areas in and around Eugene. In other parts of the city, groups such as Friends of Hendricks Park, Miracle on 33rd Street, the Jefferson-Amazon Greenway Committee, the Walama Restoration Project, and the Eugene Stream Team take on the task of restoration. From the West Eugene wetlands to Mount Pisgah Park in the east, volunteers and paid crew members are pulling up invasive species, planting native shrubs and trees, and reshaping banks to create more natural waterways. And though the direction often comes from paid staff members, volunteers provide most of the elbow grease.
BUFORD AND PISGAH Friends of Buford Park and Mt. Pisgah works to improve the ecological integrity of the Mount Pisgah area by carrying out prescribed burns, floodplain restoration, invasive species removal, and the propagation of native species. The group's most dramatic restoration project is in the South Meadow of the Howard Buford Recreation Area, a 200-acre floodplain cut by the Willamette River Coast Fork. The meadow historically contained oak-pine savanna, maple-ash riparian forest and vernal pools, but it had been used for decades to grow row crops and graze livestock. That changed in 2001, when FBP and Lane County Parks division — in cooperation with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Bonneville Power Administration Wildlife Mitigation Program — drafted the South Meadow Management Plan, which banned grazing.
To help nudge the meadow back toward its native state, FBP crew members and volunteers planted about 10,000 native riparian and upland plants, removed invasive weeds, laid out erosion control mats, and excavated an historic side channel to connect it with the Coast Fork Willamette River. Some staff weren't sure it would work, but the proof was in the flooding. In December 2003, just a month after FBP finished restoring the channel, heavy rains caused the Coast Fork to swell into the meadow: precisely the desired result, allowing riparian trees like cottonwood to germinate. There is also a nursery, which acts as a seed bank for local native plants that developed in the wild. Through a program called Adopt-a-Plot, individual volunteers can accept responsibility for the propagation of a single species from seed to adult. "Volunteers can really get to know their plant's life cycle," says Rogers. "They'll get in right at the source level of all the restoration that is done here." Although it has plenty of plans, FBP is limited by funding. Lane County Parks, as landowner of the Howard Buford Recreation Area, must approve FBP's proposals — but it has no budget for ecological restoration. "We need the money to pay the experts — or at least to pay me, to round up the volunteers," says Rogers. But she doesn't blame the county for its lack of funds; voters rejected the most recent ballot measure to fund Lane County Department of Parks and Open Spaces. "People don't seem to make the connection between the taxes and the benefits, like this," says Rogers, spreading her arms to encompass the restored landscape of the South Meadow. So FBP seeks funds elsewhere: from the Bonneville Power Administration, whose power lines through the area make it responsible for wildlife mitigation; from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, which provides technical support for habitat restoration; from nonprofits like the Oregon Country Fair and the Sperling Foundation; and from private donors. Other groups, like the Northwest Youth Corps and local schools, donate labor. Rogers says that FBP volunteers, ranging from students to businesspeople to senior citizens, contributed more than 600 hours to FBP projects last year, representing about $85,000 of labor and doubling the work capacity of FBP's paid crew. "I've always felt that restoration work is about more than restoring a piece of ground," says Rogers. "It's more about restoring the relationship between people and nature. My personal experience as a volunteer coordinator is that people are craving that, because they're constantly relating to computers and machines and other people. But to come out here and relate to plant and sun and wind and hawk and fish and water — it's just a different perspective on what's real."
AMAZON PARK
Tom Pringle is antithetical to the stereotype of the pansy environmentalist. He has a blunt tongue, sun-toughened skin, and white chest hair that puffs out of his shirt, and he scoffs at the rosy-cheeked joggers bouncing along Amazon Park trail. "I grew up in the Midwest, where there's a stronger work ethic," says Pringle. "Down by this trail, I see all these healthy young people going by, and I think, 'I've got some cardio for you. I've got some stretching for you.'" He flashes a mischievous grin. Pringle, a 59-year-old geneticist and the chair of the Native Plant Society, has removed two and a half tons of blackberry from Amazon Park between 31st and 33rd avenues and planted 52 species of native trees and shrubs — 495 plants total — at a personal cost of $1,200. For years Pringle, who's lived up the hill from Amazon Park since 1978, felt disturbed by the tangles of invasive plants choking the creek. "It was not restful, visually," he says. "I realized that I wouldn't be able to enjoy my walks unless something happened here. And something wasn't going to happen here unless I did it." Determined to get his hands dirty restoring the creek, Pringle hooked up with a neighborhood group founded in 1994 by local environmentalist Nancy Schafer. The group, Miracle on 33rd Street, operates with support from city agencies such as the Eugene Stream Team, NeighborWoods, and the Parks & Open Space division. But in Pringle's view, the city manages the creek primarily for flood control. "I know the plants will get blamed if it does flood," he says. "The whole flood culture is sort of a boogeyman. I think the city has been schizophrenic about it for a long time. It has nothing to do with property damage; it's about man controlling nature. It's a war against nature. You can look back and say, 'Mistakes were made,' but I prefer to look forward to see what can be done." For Pringle, restoration is less about attaining a past ideal than about changing people's perspectives. The city's metal fences, he says, send the wrong message. "It's alienating. It's saying: "The creek is dangerous. Don't play here.' It's very industrial." On the other hand, says Pringle, making the creek beautiful causes people to view it differently. Pringle's biggest concern is that neighbors aren't willing to put forth even a minimal effort to improve the creek. "I come out here for 20 minutes, I see a problem, I fix it and I move on," he says, tugging at the bill of his visor. "Politics gets us nowhere. I think it's a shame that we want to preserve what's beautiful, but let what's in our backyard fall apart. The Amazon speaks volumes."
AMAZON CREEK: FAIRGROUNDS ALLIANCE Farther west along Amazon Creek, another dedicated Eugene resident is working to green the creek. Jon Belcher, a straightforward man with curly white hair, gazes at Amazon's slow flow from a pedestrian bridge on the Lane County Fairgrounds.
Belcher is the head of the Jefferson-Amazon Greenway Committee, a neighborhood group that aims to convert the Amazon into a more natural waterway from the EWEB substation at Jefferson Street to Van Buren Street. The short-term goal, says Belcher, is to naturalize the north bank of the creek "chunk by chunk" by replacing invasive species with natives. The long-term goal is to excavate the south slope of the creek, widening the channel and allowing for a more natural flow. Belcher says that the greenway project represents a successful alliance between a grassroots group, a business and the city. The Greenway Committee provides most of the volunteers, the Lane County Fair Board provides irrigation and some of the plants for the project, and the Eugene Stream Team donates additional plant material. The most important factor for the success of the project, says Fair Board Managing Director Warren Wong, is volunteerism. Last November, about a dozen community members came out for the first planting of the creek's north bank. Fair Board staff planted trees to protect the native plants and shade the creek while adding aesthetic value by blocking the back side of the fairground from neighbors. Volunteers from the neighborhood, the Eugene Stream Team, and Looking Glass Youth and Family Services removed blackberries and planted native species. "This has, frankly, been a dream of mine for a long time," says Belcher, who is a GIS data services specialist for the Forest Service as well as a Eugene planning commissioner. "It's an incredible opportunity to bring the environment to downtown. We're actually starting to do something about it instead of just talking about it. I'm jazzed."
HENDRICKS PARK John Moriarty and Ginny Alfriend can't walk through Hendricks Park without stopping every few yards to pull up weeds. "Once you get to know these invasive plants, you'll never enjoy a guilt-free walk through the woods," jokes Moriarty, his hands full of a weed called Herb Robert (or, as he affectionately refers to it, "Stinky Bob").
"You become obsessive," adds Alfriend, piling up fistfuls of ivy along a sun-dappled park trail. "We have some serious problems here, and they're just getting worse." Moriarty, the forest management coordinator, and Alfriend, the acting-in-capacity gardener, are paid by the city of Eugene to oversee the ecological management of Hendricks Park. The 80-acre park — the oldest public space in the city, founded in 1905 — used to be a stretch of prairie and savanna, historically maintained with intentional fires set by Kalapuya Native Americans. But nearly a decade of fire suppression and nearby development allowed Douglas fir trees and English ivy to take over the forest, choking out the native oaks and prairie vegetation. The gravity of the situation incited the city to action. In 2000, the city's Public Works Department released
the Hendricks Park Forest Management Plan, which called for the removal
of invasive vegetation "When people started learning about the forest management plan, it spurred people to become involved," says Fred Austin, a founding member and treasurer of FHP. About 250 households, most of them neighboring the park, are dues-paying members of the organization. FHP collaborates with the city, operating in tandem with municipal employees like Alfriend and Moriarty. FHP is the primary sponsor of a native plant garden, but the city matches funds raised by the organization. The city contracts crew members from the Walama Restoration Project and the Northwest Youth Corps to clear invasive species from the forest floor, and FHP volunteers contribute to the effort. In just three years, volunteers and crew members have cleared 16 acres of ivy, encouraging the growth of native plants. "There wouldn't be a forest management plan unless there had been citizen activism driving the effort," says Moriarty. "And the city reacted to it really well." Public education seems to be making a difference. Little piles of ivy on the sides of the trail indicate that concerned park users have been pulling out invasive plants. "It takes everybody being involved," says Alfriend. "After we started educating people about ivy removal, ivy started disappearing from lawns all over town. It has effects beyond the borders of Hendricks Park."
The headway made by volunteers and crew members is encouraging, but restoration in Hendricks is a continuous effort, and the forest will never be as healthy as it was a century ago. Fragmentation breaks up wildlife habitat and makes it difficult for a self-sustaining ecosystem to establish. "It's not really an intact forest," says Moriarty. "It's nothing but edge, really. Our efforts are management, not control. We don't have any illusions that one day it'll be perfect." A delighted dog scampers up to Moriarty, tail wagging. It has no leash — an illegal offense in Hendricks. The dog's owner, seeing Moriarty and Alfriend, turns around and walks briskly away. "You're under arrest!" Moriarty jokingly tells the dog. Alfriend smiles. "Here we are in the middle of town, and it's quiet," she says with a sigh. "I think it's important to have this kind of sanctuary. It's nice to go to a place where the loudest things are the birds and the wind."
RESOUNDING ISSUES The term "restoration" suggests a return to a state of the past — and yet none of the restoration efforts summarized here can restore the landscape to its pre-development integrity. Lorna Baldwin, Eugene Stream Team's environmental volunteer coordinator, acknowledges that restoration is probably a misnomer. "When you say 'restore,' restore to what?" she asks, deadpan. Nothing short of a mass exodus from Eugene, coupled with the tearing up of roads and houses and intensive ecological rehabilitation, could restore the area's native habitats in all their integrity. Rather than reverting Eugene open spaces to their historical states, local restoration projects are primarily educational. They involve community members and link diverse groups with common goals, demonstrating what can be done within the limitations of our urban environment. Pringle is trying to make an example of his work along the Amazon. "I'm not just sticking plants in the ground; I'm doing an installation," he says. "I have constraints, but within those constraints, I'm trying to create something very beautiful here. I believe in my heart that a nice, peaceful setting has a lot of health and mental benefits. If we make the choice to destroy the whole place, at least we should at least see the beauty first." Pringle laments that Eugene's restoration efforts lag behind those of other Oregon cities. "We have this green reputation, but when people from out of town come in and see the Amazon, they think we're not walking the walk," says Pringle. "Eugene has drifted toward being a larger Springfield. After Ashland, Corvallis, and Portland, I think we're running about fourth in terms of communities wanting livability." The city of Eugene's natural resource manager, Scott Duckett, disagrees. "To be quite honest, Eugene serves as a model for most of those communities in terms of restoration projects," he says. For example, in mid-June Eugene hosted the Willamette Restoration Initiative, during which municipal employees from all over Oregon came to Eugene to learn from our local successes in natural restoration. Duckett says that Portland city staff members often contact the municipal Eugene staff for advice on restoration programs. Duckett claims that local efforts have preserved the genes of more than 90 native plants. "We've started a groundswell in the Willamette Valley in working with native prairie and upland species," he says. "We have probably the most aggressive native seed program in the state." But Pringle cites the Chamber of Commerce and developers as the groups most actively opposing restoration projects. "They have a very different view, which is, 'How can I make as much money as possible?'" Industry isn't the only group to blame, adds Pringle. Citizens who say they care, but do nothing to volunteer, are also responsible for ecological degradation in Eugene. "People who aren't part of the solution are part of the problem right now," he says.
HOPE FROM DESPAIR On June 20, the most recent volunteer day at the FBP nursery, FBP Stewardship Assistant Hal Hushbeck stood alone in the nursery under the bright sun, waiting in vain for volunteers. Hushbeck, a 58-year-old environmentalist whose shaggy gray hair frames a handsome, sun-bronzed face, waffles between cynicism and hope. "The effectiveness of restoration in the long run is dependent upon the community's willingness to sustain it — either with money or with volunteers — in relation to everything else that needs to be done," he says. "You have to recognize that any restoration is a demonstration project that has little chance of being applied across the whole society." Restoration sets a hopeful example when people show up, says Hushbeck, and sometimes as many as 20 volunteers attend FBP's volunteer events. But when nobody comes, he says, "you rationalize it. It's a brain-fry in the summer, and in the winter it can be difficult to get up in the dark and go to work." Restoration labor isn't easy. "It saps a lot of strength. It's a lot of physical work," says Hushbeck, absently scratching a muscular forearm with cracked fingernails. Seeing the destruction of local habitats also discourages Hushbeck. "We're ruining more than we're actually repairing," he says. "That's where that despair or cynicism comes in." Despite its frustrations, local restoration work has
undeniable rewards. It involves community members and students, it educates
people about native and invasive species, and it raises the personal
investment in our local natural heritage. Successful projects send the
message that restoration work makes a difference in terms of local aesthetics
and wildlife habitat. They also boost the local economy by investing
in irrigation equipment rentals, landscape maintenance supplies, and
garden suppliers. Nonprofit nurseries build a local seed base that And, says Hushbeck, working with natural elements is good for inner peace. "People feel real clear about this work in that it's honest, valuable outdoor work," he says. "Volunteering builds a community mindset that everyone has a responsibility. That's the faith that we're working on."
HOW LOCAL GROUPS ARE HELPING THE
EUGENE STREAM TEAM Lorna Baldwin, a silver-haired woman with piercing brown eyes and a no-nonsense manner, is the Stream Team's environmental volunteer coordinator and its only full-time employee. Baldwin says that because invasive species, coupled with continued development, are the biggest threat to native habitats, restoration efforts focus on removing invaders and replacing them with native species. The Stream Team's two native plant nurseries are run completely by volunteers. Plants from the nurseries go to restoration sites across Eugene, and the agency supplies tools for local environmental groups like the Walama Restoration Project. "The Stream Team has no budget for direct funding of another group, so we help however we can," says Baldwin. "Tools and plants and word of mouth are all I can do." Volunteer info: 682-4850.
CURRENT
CITY PROJECTS Another city program that encourages native vegetation is NeighborWoods, a partnership of city employees, local businesses, and community volunteers who share the common goal of planting and caring for native street trees in public spaces. According to the program's website, volunteers for NeighborWoods — led by city's urban forestry staff at the Public Works Parks and Open Space division — have planted almost 5,000 trees since the program's founding in 1992. Volunteers agree to water and weed the trees they plant, and the city commits to pruning. NeighborWoods volunteer info: 682-4800.
WALAMA
RESTORATION PROJECT Unlike the neighborhood restoration groups, Walama's scope encompasses restoration work in a spectrum of public open spaces. "We work with local watershed councils doing stewardship projects throughout Lane County," says Walama outreach coordinator Stephanie Schroeder. "Our mission is to conduct ecological stewardship within the Willamette Valley." Walama has a staff of about 10 paid crew workers and about 700 members throughout Lane County. Walama's funding comes from private donations, grants, and work contracts from the city. Its five main stewardship sites — in Lafferty Park, Maurie Jacobs Park, Berkeley Park, the Butterfly Meadow in the Whilamut Natural Area, and the Gudu-kut restoration project (which it runs with the Westmoreland Advocacy Group) — are run primarily by volunteers during seasonal "work parties." Walama crew members removed invasive species to enhance a wet prairie habitat in Amazon Park, and in partnership with the city and the Nature Conservancy, the organization rehabilitated oak-savanna habitats at Skinners Butte and in the Coburg Hills. Volunteer info: 484-3939. — Kera Abraham |
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