VAL ROGERS
TOM PRINGLE
JOHN BELCHER
GINNY ALFRIEND AND JOHN MORIARTY
Restoration
Eugeneans labor to
save special places.
STORY AND PHOTOS BY KERA ABRAHAM
F
or Val Rogers, few sights
are sweeter than a plant
thriving in its native envi-
ronment. 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 grow-
ing 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 under-
sides. “Finally lookin’ good!” she says glee-
fully.
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.
10 JULY 1, 2004
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 reshap-
ing 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 pre-
scribed burns, floodplain restoration, inva-
sive 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 con-
tained 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 coopera-
tion 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 vol-
unteers 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 fin-
ished restoring the channel, heavy rains
caused the Coast Fork to swell into the
meadow: precisely the desired result, allow-
ing riparian trees like cottonwood to germi-
nate.
There is also a nursery, which acts as a
seed bank for local native plants that devel-
oped 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 restora-
tion 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 volun-
teers,” says Rogers. But she doesn’t blame
the county for its lack of funds; voters reject-
ed the most recent ballot measure to fund
Lane County Department of Parks and Open
Spaces. “People don’t seem to make the con-
nection 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 respon-
sible 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