Chance to add Wildish land to Pisgah park mustn't be lost.

Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Theodore Palmer For The Register-Guard

The recent Measure 37 claim by Wildish Co., covering roughly 1,400 acres just north of the Howard Buford Recreation Area has brought the future of this land before the public again. Development would severely degrade the 2,363-acre recreation area.

For the past two decades, the Wildish land has gone largely untouched. An aerial photograph of Mount Pisgah shows no difference between it and the park land. The Wildish holdings include about 20 percent of the mountain, reaching within about 250 feet in elevation of the summit (1,900 feet horizontally). The lowlands contain the Pudding Creek area, which is of extreme ecological interest, and about 10 miles of river frontage.

If the Wildish land were added to the current Buford recreation area, about 3,500 acres between the Coast Fork and Middle Fork of the Willamette would be preserved - including essentially all of Mount Pisgah. This whole tract would have more than 10 miles of natural river boundary and less than two miles of nonriver boundary, along the east outline of the mountain. The two rivers provide corridors for many types of wildlife, connecting this area to forest land. Both rivers have some public parks on the opposite banks, creating a total tract of park land approaching 5,000 acres.

The Wildish Co. built and owns a bridge over the Coast Fork less than a mile upstream from its confluence with the Middle Fork of the Willamette River. This bridge would make possible an essentially level bicycle path from Eugene and Springfield to both sides of Mount Pisgah. Furthermore, it has been understood for decades that the ponds excavated for gravel along the river can be converted relatively easily into wildlife and recreational treasures.

In March 1971, Gov. Tom McCall finally acceded to a long campaign by many people and organizations in Lane County to buy Mount Pisgah for a public park. The total land area was approximately 3,500 acres between the Coast Fork and the Middle Fork of the Willamette. The understanding was that 2,363 acres would be acquired right away (funds were approved by the legislative Emergency Board in February 1972), with the Wildish land to be added later when it was no longer being used for gravel extraction.

Major gravel operations ceased about 1985, although the land continues to be the source of relatively minor supplies. Repeated attempts to acquire the land for park use have been made since then, but none have succeeded.

All of my life I have been associated with parks. I had the good fortune of working closely with county parks director Howard Buford himself at the beginning of my 30 years of volunteer effort on Mount Pisgah. (In those early years, the Wildish Co. was very helpful to me and to the nascent Mount Pisgah Arboretum.)

When Buford retired, The Register-Guard had a full page tribute to him as "A man whose dreams came true" (July 29, 1973). I know from Buford, and from his family, that including all of Mount Pisgah in a regional park was by far the greatest of his dreams. If the Wildish land is not preserved now, Buford and many others will not have achieved their dreams.

Whether we like it or not, the Eugene-Springfield area is going to grow in population and spread out in area. A 3,500-acre park with rivers forming 80 percent of its boundary can maintain its character and integrity under severe land use pressure. A mountain with 20 percent of its area developed and with only one edge on a river cannot.

Thus, I believe that securing the Wildish land as park land is the most important issue facing our community in considering its future character. I compare the current choice to the choice made by Eugene in the 1930s to buy Spencer Butte as a park. Do not let our generation fail when our predecessors made the right decision during much harder times.

Theodore Palmer is a professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of Oregon. He helped found the Mount Pisgah Arboretum in 1973 and has been an officer of the arboretum for 19 of the past 33 years, including five years as president.