BY MARY O’BRIEN
Stepping Stones
Will a wetlands education center
be built on crucial habitat?
F
ollowing Wetlands Appreciation month in
Eugene, here’s a riddle with some surpris-
ingly disturbing answers for wetlands-ap-
preciators:
What do the proposed West Eugene Wetlands
Environmental Education Center and the proposed
West Eugene Parkway have in common?
The obvious answer: Wetlands! The education cen-
ter will help teach us to treasure and understand life in
west Eugene’s almost-gone wetlands while the highway
would be built in those wetlands.
The less obvious answers:
• The seven buildings, amphitheater, parking lot, and roadway proposed for the ed-
ucation complex would likewise be built in West Eugene Wetlands.
• Both the highway and education complex would be built on potentially crucial up-
land “stepping stones” for our endangered Fender’s blue butterfly.
The central issue is the reality that West Eugene’s Wetlands are a mixture of “wet”
and “upland” prairie. Sometimes only a few inches’ difference in elevation distinguish
the two, with upland prairie perched slightly to moderately above adjacent, water-
logged wet prairie. Those few inches, however, spell the difference between home and
not-home for certain plant species and their associated wildlife.
We are evicting Fender’s blue butterfly
from its home on Earth.
Fender’s blue butterfly, listed nationally as “endangered,” is linked inextricably not
only to our Willamette Valley, but also to an exclusively Willamette Valley plant,
Kincaid’s lupine. This lupine, federally listed as “threatened,” is an upland prairie plant.
In the West Eugene Wetlands, Fender’s blue butterflies lay their eggs only on Kincaid’s
lupine; their larvae (caterpillars) eat only Kincaid’s lupine leaves; the caterpillars rest
for the winter at the base of Kincaid’s lupine, resume feeding on Kincaid’s lupine the
next spring, build a pupa and finally emerge as butterflies. During their 15 days of but-
terfly-ness, Fender’s blue butterflies fly primarily within and among Kincaid’s lupine
patches, searching for a mate and egg-laying spots.
When wet and upland prairies still filled much of Willamette Valley, a Fender’s blue
butterfly could insure the genetic adaptability of its species by mating with a Fender’s
blue butterfly from a nearby Kincaid’s lupine patch. (Butterflies, like us, need to look
beyond their immediate relatives for mates.) Now, with 99.9 percent of all Willamette
Valley wetland and upland prairies drained, plowed, farmed, paved or “developed”
(i.e., eliminated) for homes and businesses, we are evicting Fender’s blue butterfly
from its home on Earth. Simply, neighboring lupine patches are too few and far away.
I
n west Eugene, we have one of the best chances to lure Fender’s blue butterfly
back from the cliff of extinction. The Nature Conservancy tries to protect one
main population of Fender’s blue butterfly south of West 11th in their Willow Creek
Preserve. The BLM hosts another, more modest population, about 3.1 miles (5 km),.to
the northwest, off Fir Butte Road. But Fender’s blue butterflies mostly fly short dis-
tances within a lupine patch, with wanderers occasionally flying up to about 1.2 miles
(2 km). In order to prevent the extinction of Fender’s blue butterfly, “stepping stones”
of Kincaid’s lupine need to be restored between the two main West Eugene butterfly
populations, along with certain native plants that provide nectar (butterfly fuel).
Unfortunately, both the proposed highway and education complex are sited for
construction in upland prairie, directly in the northwest-southeast path in which
Fender’s blue butterfly needs every Kincaid’s lupine stepping stone it can find.
Just as the West Eugene Parkway was planned before the values of West Eugene’s
wetlands were understood, so the education center was planned before upland prairie
was appreciated as crucial habitat. However, alternatives to environmental destruc-
tion always exist. In the case of the Education Center, for instance, a more modest
footprint of buildings on the western half of the site would allow for butterfly restora-
tion and use of the eastern half, which is connected to still more upland habitat to the
north. Alternatively, a donated site on some private land might be possible.
The Education Center’s website notes that its “sustainable design features …
demonstrate that humans can live responsibly with the land.” If the Center decides to
demonstrate that responsibility for location as well as design, it will provide an ad-
mirable example for Oregon Department of Transportation, Federal Highways
Administration and us all.
It’s about genuine appreciation of wetlands.
Mary O’Brien of Eugene has worked as a public interest scientist since 1981. She can be reached at
mob@efn.org
4 JUNE 8, 2006
TO THE EDITOR
FLUENCY WALK
In response to “Culture of Whiteness”
(cover story, 5/18), I identify myself as a 33-
year-old white (German, Swedish, Irish, pos-
sibly Czech) female with no university affili-
ation. When I read that article, I
read about an issue lived by stu-
dents taking a risk to educate
people like me. In this letter, I
address those who desire a
world that embraces diversity of
appearances, backgrounds and
experiences.
At last year’s Take Back the
Night (to end sexual violence),
one of the speakers said, “We
need to become fluent in the
struggle of the person sitting next to us.”
Most people I know have two reactions to
such a statement. First, they acknowledge the
need for change with no follow-through. If
we don’t talk about it, it’ll go away, right?
Next, they get agitated. No one cares about
their burden so why should they care about
anyone else’s crap? And so it goes.
Personally, I cannot relate to the specific
struggles these students face. All I know to do
is listen and learn. It is a start. I will bear wit-
ness. I have and will continue to talk about
what they have shared with my friends and
family. If more is required of me, I will be
open to it. I can do this because every day I
acknowledge my own needs, first. When did
this become selfish?
I propose that you ask yourself honestly
what it is in your daily functioning that dis-
ables your ability to fully experience your
neighbor, your friend, or a stranger who is
walking the same sidewalk.
Katie Custer
Eugene
ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL
I’m perplexed. For a week now I’ve been
trying to see how we, as a community, and the
Weekly, as a business, benefit from the pub-
lishing of J.K. Larkin’s Viewpoint (5/25).
Initially I thought that perhaps it was an
editorial oversight, that maybe it wasn’t even
read before its inclusion in the issue, and that
someone on Lincoln Street was guilty of
being asleep at the wheel. Maybe it’s that, de-
spite the fact that Larkin is clearly
a terrible satirist and has given us
only a thoroughly incomprehensi-
ble series of generalizations to
masquerade as a “viewpoint,”
what he has to say is so important
that Eugene needed to read it. But
no, the Larkin piece is not impor-
tant. It doesn’t even seem to have
much of a point. In fact I am, as I
said, perplexed that it was even
deemed worth printing.
But maybe I’m really missing the point
here. Maybe what it really says is that EW be-
lieves racial stereotyping in our community is
OK, so long as it comes from someone who
is, of course, only kidding. Unfortunately, by
giving a voice to the uninformed, you share in
the blame. I mean it’s not like you had to print
the article; you chose to. Whether you per-
sonally find it offensive or not, you had to at
least be aware that a sizable portion of our
community might find it so. And to what
end?
I hope that in the future you will make
more informed and responsible editorial de-
cisions.
Geoff Stiles
Eugene
WEP ALTERNATIVE
At 7 pm June 15, West Eugene
Transportation, Land and Neighborhood
Design Solutions (WETLANDS) will spon-
sor a forum and dialogue about the West
Eugene Parkway, potential federal lawsuits
and the WETLANDS alternative to the WEP.
This free event will be held in Harris Hall, 8th
and Oak..
June 14 is the 10th anniversary of the
1996 lawsuit by Save Our ecoSystems
against the Federal Highway Administration.