E A RT H D AY 2 0 1 2
RIVERS TO RIDGES
Government and nonprofits band together
for open spaces in Lane County BY STACEY M. HOLLIS
T
he fi rst thing outdoorsy newcomers to Eugene might
want to know is “Where are the parks?” and “What
hiking spots are nearby?”
It can be a little confusing — who owns what
and why one area is closed to hikers and another area isn’t
— because a lot of different organizations and entities
oversee Lane County’s recreational and conservation
hotspots. Some have been set aside and left to the devices of
nature while others are under active habitat management or
undergoing recreational planning and development.
While parks are in high demand, each space requires its
own share of management and restoration to maintain the
health of the natural ecosystem it supports. This is where
the collaborative efforts and vision of the growing Rivers to
Ridges (R2R) partnership comes in.
R2R is a framework that brings together existing open
spaces and targets future areas by uniting entities like
cities, government agencies and conservation groups with
public input. View the vision on a map and you see the
interconnectedness of Lane County’s green spaces and
waterways and the places where people can access these
natural resources.
The R2R vision or partnership is “a blueprint, a vision
that says, knowing what we know about what people like
about this community and the resources that we have, what
can we do when the opportunity comes up to ensure that
my children, my grandchildren, their grandchildren can
enjoy those same sorts of things,” says Joe Moll, executive
director of McKenzie River Trust, one of the participating
groups.
The “key players” in the R2R vision range across the
entire political spectrum, and there’s a reason for that, says
Jeff Krueger, senior landscape architect of Lane Council of
Governments (LCOG). “We all ultimately have a similar
underlying motivation for preserving beautiful places.”
Krueger describes the partnership as “not unlike the
model used by the watershed councils, bringing all the
key players together for collaboration and sharing of
resources.”
He offers Arlie Land Company as an example of an
entity that was motivated to join the partnership. “They
were interested in participating in a sale of a portion of their
property,” Krueger says, “and one of the incentives for them
was just knowing that for future development, having a
healthy open space system adjacent to development areas is
really important for property owners today.”
R2R PARTNERS
Lane Council of Governments
McKenzie Watershed Council
The Nature Conservancy
City of Eugene
McKenzie River Trust
City of Springfield
Willamalane Park & Recreation District
Lane County Parks
Eugene Water & Electric Board
Willamette Riverkeeper
Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife
Metropolitan Wastewater
Management Commission
Oregon Parks and Recreation Department
Long Tom Watershed Council
Coast Fork Willamette Watershed Council
Middle Fork Willamette Watershed Council
Krueger says that R2R is “strictly a voluntary collaboration
of partners that have similar interests” with no funding
requirements. He says that by “signing onto this conceptual
vision,” new partners commit to R2R by offering support and
working together toward “implementing the vision.”
“We joined the Rivers to Ridges partnership,” says Dana De-
trick, coordinator and executive director of the Long Tom Wa-
tershed Council, “because our mission to improve water quality
and fi sh and wildlife using local knowledge and voluntary ac-
tion fi ts in well with the components of the R2R mission.”
Thanks to the partnership, the Long Tom council now
works closely with the McKenzie River Trust.
McKenzie River Trust coordinator Liz Lawrence says
the group can turn to Long Tom, “when we need resources
or advice or a real working partnership on the ground, or if
we don’t have the restoration capacity to do projects on the
level that they can.” She adds, “We have the land and they
have the technical know-how they can bring to the table to
benefi t the habitat and the fi sh and wildlife there.”
So what’s the future of R2R? “It ebbs and fl ows
as different projects arise, different members of the
partnership come together and work together,” Moll says,
“On a regular basis the partners get together and share
technical information or executive level folks get together
and say ‘hey, here are the big-picture funding or legislative
(developments) we see coming, here are opportunities, here
are things we need to watch for.’ So it’s really a gathering
place, a forum for sharing that information.”
“We realize we’ve all got different strengths,” says Val
Rogers about the Rivers to Ridges partnership. Rogers
is development director for Friends of Buford Park &
Mount Pisgah. “For us, balancing recreation and habitat
enhancement is right at the core of our mission so that’s
always a big focus that people have to work with: how
to make it work for both people and nature … but we’re
committed to exactly that.”
ew
For a map of the R2R vision go to: wkly.ws/195
April 22, 2012
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EUGENE WEEKLY APRIL 19, 2012 17