Ceremony celebrates wetlands project.

Byline: Joe Mosley The Register-Guard

Local dignitaries celebrated the undoing of work done by their predecessors when a restored 400-acre chunk of the West Eugene Wetlands was dedicated on Monday.

Meadowlark Prairie, which lies southeast of Greenhill Road and Royal Avenue, is the most recently completed portion of the 2,500-acre West Eugene Wetlands area encompassing much of the Amazon and Willow creek drainages.

The $6.5 million Meadowlark restoration took 10 years from planning to completion and involved removal of flood control levees built in the 1950s, along with rehabilitation of the Amazon Creek streambed and replacement of invasive plant species with native ones.

It also included a 2.5-mile extension of the Fern Ridge Bike Path and construction of a wildlife overlook at the meadow's northwest corner.

"The changes that were made in the creek return it to its original profile," Eric Jones, spokesman for the Eugene Public Works Department, said Monday. "So this is not just a matter of digging out some invasive (plant) species."

Before the area was settled in the 1850s, much of the Willamette Valley was dominated by seasonal wet prairie habitat. Those wetlands have since been drained for use as farmland and other development, to the point that experts now estimate less than 1 percent of the valley's historic wetlands remain.

Planning for the Meadowlark Prairie restoration began in 1993, and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management began acquiring farmland for the project two years later. Since 1999, flood control levees have been removed while new levees around the perimeter of the wetlands have been erected.

Construction of the bike path extension and wildlife overlook signaled completion of the project's main elements earlier this year.

The new segment of the 12-foot-wide concrete path extends from Terry Street in the Bethel area to Greenhill at Royal, and crosses four bridges.

The overlook, on Greenhill just south of Royal, includes a parking area and bike racks, covered viewing areas, picnic tables and restrooms.

Work on the overall project featured a partnership between the BLM, the city of Eugene, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Oregon Department of Transportation, with most of the funding coming from federal sources.

"It demonstrates how much can be done, and shows how much more can be done in the future because these agencies now have a history of working together so successfully," Jones said.

Monday's dedication included a ceremonial blessing of the site by Frank Merrill, an elder in the local American Indian community.

CAPTION(S):

Children were invited to scoop up a handful of seeds of native grasses and then cast them onto the land during dedication Monday of the Meadowlark Prairie wetlands west of Eugene. The Associated Press Paul Carter / The Register-Guard America Indian elder Frank Merrill of Eugene, from the Karuk Tribe in Northern California, performs a blessing during the dedication Monday of the Meadowlark Prairie wetlands observation point off Greenhill Road west of Eugene.