Stewardship Program Spotlight: Habitat Corridors and More
Blog post by Thomas Meinzen, Program Associate, with Max Samuelson, Stewardship Director, Columbia Slough Watershed Council
Stewardship Director Max Samuelson with CSWC mascot Henrietta the Great Blue Heron
As we wrap up this year’s planting season, it’s time to reflect on some of the successes, surprises, and lessons learned in the Council’s Stewardship program. I spoke with Max Samuelson, the Council’s Stewardship Director, about restoration in the watershed and an exciting habitat corridor the Council is helping build in northeast Portland’s Concordia neighborhood.
Can you tell me a little about the Council’s Stewardship program? What do you enjoy most about leading this program?
The Stewardship program manages all the Council’s on-the-ground habitat enhancement and restoration projects in the watershed. These include traditional restoration projects like taking out invasive blackberry and planting native plants in parks and natural areas, as well as residential stormwater mitigation projects, like installing rain gardens at low-income homes. The Stewardship program also organizes volunteer habitat restoration events and litter cleanups, including our long-running and popular Great Slough Cleanup event.
One of my favorite things about this program is how much it varies throughout the year. In winter and early spring, we focus on planting, then in summer we turn toward cleanups, and in fall we plan long-term projects and maintain restoration sites. The variety keeps things interesting, and year-round we’re able to engage with the community and help people connect with their local natural areas, which is really rewarding.
Are there any restoration projects that you are particularly excited about right now?
Youth from the Blueprint Foundation doing restoration work at the former site of the City of Vanport, now Heron Lakes Golf Course.
One project that’s particularly exciting is our restoration work at the former site of Vanport, the diverse wartime city that was destroyed in the flood of 1948 (learn more about this from nonprofits Vanport Places and Vanport Mosaic). For this project, we’ve partnered with youth from the Blueprint Foundation to help create native riparian habitat at Heron Lakes Golf Course, which now occupies the former site of Vanport and sits within an important floodplain for migrating birds and wildlife. Better yet, we’ve paired this restoration work with education, bringing in Vanport historian Professor James Harrison to the restoration site to talk about Vanport history with Black youth from the Blueprint Foundation. It’s really neat to help bring habitat restoration, social justice, and history together in one project.
Another project I’m excited about is the NE Ainsworth Habitat Corridor. Our restoration work is always a community endeavor, but this project is particularly community-focused: we’re creating a neighborhood habitat corridor that can be co-used by birds, pollinators, and people.
Say more! Where is this habitat corridor being built and what’s the goal of it?
Volunteers planting native shrubs in the NE Ainsworth habitat corridor.
In collaboration with several agencies and nonprofits, we’re planting a native habitat corridor in the 25-ft.-wide median of NE Ainsworth St., starting at Alberta Park on 22nd Ave. and extending all the way—eventually—to Fernhill Park on 37th Ave. This corridor will connect patches of native habitat in the two parks, creating a passageway for pollinators, birds, walkers, and runners through the Concordia neighborhood.
In this part of the Columbia Slough watershed, there are few corridors connecting isolated habitat patches in parks, making it difficult for animal populations to persist, disperse, and intermix. Our project goals are to give pollinators and birds a corridor to travel between parks, to beautify the right-of-way for the neighborhood, and to mitigate stormwater runoff into Portland’s overtaxed sewer system by absorbing it into the median with the help of deep-rooted perennial plants.
What are you planting?
NE Ainsworth gets a lot of sun, so pollinator plants and wildflowers fare better here than at most of our restoration sites, which are commonly shaded by trees. We’re planting many different species of native wildflowers, including Oregon sunshine, yarrow, goldenrod, meadowfoam, Douglas aster, and lupine. Our goal is to have something blooming all the way from April to October every year, so there will always be a buffet for pollinators.
Native pollinator habitat in the NE Ainsworth corridor.
In shadier spots, we’re planting our classic native understory plants, including osoberry, red-flowering currant, Oregon grape, and snowberry. We’ve also left bare ground and logs for nesting pollinators, since that’s where most of our native bees nest (we recommend doing the same in your gardens!). Last year, we were delighted to see a variety of bees, butterflies, and other insects using the habitat corridor.
Who’s involved and what has been completed so far?
The habitat corridor project is a collaboration between many groups. Portland Parks and Recreation, Portland Bureau of Transportation, and Wisdom of the Elders are planning and implementing the project, and youth from Outside In, PGE’s Project Zero, neighbors, and volunteers are helping plant, care for, and maintain the corridor. If YOU would like to help, send me an email!
Our goal is to create a habitat corridor all the way from Alberta Park to Fernhill Park, a total of 15 blocks. In 2019 we planted two blocks, in 2020, one block, and this year we plan to complete two more blocks, so by this time next year, we’ll be one third of the way to our goal!
What are some of the challenges you’ve faced in this project?
Unlike many of our restoration projects that are tucked away in parks and natural areas, this one is right in people’s neighborhoods, so naturally, neighbors care a lot about how it looks. We’ve had to focus more on creating a landscaped look and feel rather than pure ecosystem functionality, as well as ensuring that pedestrians can walk through it and visibility is not impeded. It has been both fun and challenging to come up with solutions to these new variables.
For example, when we first started the project, we planted out the whole median. Then we saw lots of trails were being made and realized that we needed to incorporate the human component a lot more. Talking to people was crucial. It’s challenging for projects like these to become an instant success; when plants are still small and not established, and it’s wintertime, they don’t look like much. As plants have grown and the project has progressed, people have become more enthusiastic. Overall, the neighborhood response has been extremely positive. Each time we visit the site, we hear from neighbors out in their yards or walking their dogs that say how much they appreciate the new space.
How do these challenges inform your approach to stewardship work in the watershed?
Volunteers planting out the habitat corridor.
It’s always been important to us to provide ways for people to connect and build community through volunteer work parties, so people can get outside and make a visible difference in the watershed. Plus, we want our work to support our local economy. With most every restoration project we do, we provide career development and job skills by partnering with youth workforce development organizations like Blueprint Foundation, Multnomah Youth Cooperative, and Outside In.
And, of course, I think it’s really important to communicate with neighbors and stakeholders what the purpose is of any project. In particular, the NE Ainsworth project—because it’s in such a high visibility area—taught us how important it is to have neighborhood buy-in and broad community support, so that our projects become long-term community assets. Really, this is how every project should go, but NE Ainsworth brought all of these goals into focus.
We work in a very urbanized watershed, with hundreds of thousands of residents and lots of industry and businesses. The core purpose of most of our restoration work is habitat and water quality enhancement, but it’s also much more than that, and working in a public right of way in a busy neighborhood reinforced the value of having those most directly impacted involved every step of the way.
Anything else you’d like people to know about the NE Ainsworth project?
If any neighbors want to come out and help maintain the habitat corridor, we’d love your help! We maintain a small group of volunteers that do regular light weeding and watering (check out our Volunteer Guide for the site here). If you are interested in helping, email me at max.samuelson@columbiaslough.org.
And if you’re in the area this spring and summer, keep an eye out for birds and pollinators! If you have any identification questions about what you’re seeing, feel free to email them to thomas.meinzen@columbiaslough.org.