Priceless Moments Otters remind us of what's at stake. BY MARY O'BRIEN Like many of my fellow Eugeneans, I was enchanted last week by news that river otters have returned to Amazon Creek in our West Eugene Wetlands. So last Sunday morning I searched for them in the creek's pre-dawn waters. It was a Halloween landscape: low, cold mists hovering above the prairie; great blue herons silently hunched in the dark creek; wet, heavy spider webs draped on tall grasses; Canada geese slipping in front of a fingernail-sliver moon; red-winged blackbird sounds coming from unseen locations. Two elements were missing from those pre-dawn wetlands, one of which (otters in the creek) I hope to soon see; the other (a four-lane freeway roaring above that creek) I hope I never see. Last spring I was hiking four days down the Rogue River with my husband, son, and his fiancée. Across from Whiskey Creek, we saw an otter rolling around, scratching its back on boulders. "It's getting pretty close to the edge," Josh noticed as the otter wriggled with abandon. Five seconds later, the otter tipped upside down and backwards into the Rogue. It immediately sprung out, cast one glance our way, and leapt back onto the rocks, seemingly trying to imply that the fall had been intended. To see an otter is to know delight. Otters, like beaver and salmon, once were our ubiquitous river companions throughout Oregon. Despite their resiliency, however, we have insisted on damming, roading, straightening, heating, diverting and polluting their watery homes to the point they are now exceptions rather than the rule. But given even partial restoration of waterways like Amazon Creek, all three of these adaptable and sturdy animals return to offer their skills, endurance and beauty. Imagine a piece of paper 8-1/2 by 11 inches. And then imagine one tiny corner, 1/3 inch by 1/3 inch. If the whole piece of paper represents wetlands prairie area that once existed in the Willamette Valley, the one-third square inch fragment represents what remains, primarily in west Eugene, Fir Butte, and Findley Wildlife Refuge near Corvallis,. It is in these prairie fragments that Fender's blue butterfly, the great copper butterfly, western pond turtle, and other wetlands species are pulling themselves back from the precipice of extinction. And it is in these wetlands that otter are reminding us that if we give them back a tiny portion of their home, they will reward us and our children for the rest of our lives with priceless moments.   West Eugene Parkway advocate Gary Wildish of Chambers Construction writes in a recent Register-Guard op-ed that Mayor Piercy is repeating "the tired argument that wetlands would be lost to the roadway, overlooking that fact that any affected wetlands would be offset by the creation of twice as many … The restoration of wetlands and net gain in their number is what is important, and that's what the parkway plan would achieve." Mr. Wildish either doesn't understand or won't admit two important things: • The wetlands that would be affected by being bisected throughout their length by the noise, pollution, physical blockage, and visual degradation of the West Eugene Parkway is the entire West Eugene Wetlands, not just the acreage upon which the highway would directly squat. Mr. Wildish's solution for "affected" wetlands is like promising that if a city street is constructed down the middle of the UO football field, a patch of football turf twice the footprint of that street will be built somewhere else, say over by Albertson's market. The reality is that the street would destroy the football field as a functioning and enjoyable system, and creating a disconnected patch of turf wouldn't begin to offset that destruction. • Secondly, neither Wildish nor anyone else yet knows how to "create" a fully functioning, biologically diverse wetlands. So far, people are able to make only childish imitations of wild, functioning wetlands. What is a tired argument is that we have no ability to figure out any way to travel around this one tiny fragment of congressionally purchased, public wetlands and its amazing inhabitants. If you are lucky enough to see the otters of Amazon Creek, tell them a lot of folks are working to prevent a highway from roaring over them. Mary O'Brien of Eugene has worked as a public interest scientist since 1981. She can be reached at mob@efn.org
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