Farmland may go back to nature.

Byline: Scott Maben The Register-Guard

COBURG - It could blossom into one of the largest parks, nature preserves or wildlife refuges in central Lane County.

Whatever incarnation, the goal will remain certain: to restore and conserve habitat for a rich mix of birds, fish and mammals flourishing on the fringe of Eugene.

The McKenzie River Trust plans to buy 856 acres of mostly agricultural land immediately downstream from where the Willamette and McKenzie rivers meet.

The property borders another 430 acres of public lands, offering the opportunity to protect habitat in an area larger than Eugene's Alton Baker, Amazon, Hendricks, Skinner Butte, Spencer Butte and Westmoreland parks, plus the University of Oregon campus, combined.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to acquire this land for conservation," said George Grier, manager of what the Eugene-based land trust has named the Green Island project. "It's just kind of mind-boggling to think about the potential this place has."

The trust has signed an agreement to buy the land from the Green family, which farmed it for most of the 20th century. The owners knocked $500,000 off the selling price of $2.2 million, and the trust is pursuing several grants to complete the deal.

According to the family's wishes, a conservation easement will preserve the land for eternity.

"I think we owe it to future generations," said Jim Green, whose grandfather and great-uncle bought the property during the Depression. "The farmland is very near and dear to our hearts."

But the family, the largest equity holder in Agripac before the vegetable-processing cooperative went bankrupt in 1999, was losing money on its crops and stopped farming a little more than a year ago, said Green, who now runs a plant nursery in Centralia, Wash.

"Ultimately, I would prefer to see it go back to what it used to be," before it was farmed, he said. "The thing is an absolute haven for wildlife. I really didn't want to see it turned into a gravel pit."

His aunt, Karen Green of Tucson, said the family long knew the property was unique, particularly such a large tract so near Eugene.

"Personally, I was hooked on its beauty and serenity from the first time I saw it," she said.

"My late husband, Les Green, always expressed the idea that, as individuals, no one owns the land," she said. "We pay for the right to use it, to develop it to its highest and best use, but ultimately, it still remains forever after we are gone."

Restoration will begin in measured steps. Blackberries and other invasive vegetation will be removed and replaced with native plants, while the fields will continue to be leased for farming in the short term.

Eventually, the rivers will be allowed to reclaim the farmland. Floods will punch through banks and berms, cutting new channels throughout the confluence area and creating attractive habitat for salmon, bull trout, waterfowl, river otter and other native species.

The braiding pattern of the rivers once was standard, but they've mostly been forced into single, immobile channels to maximize land use for agriculture and development.

The Green Island complex - one large island and seven small ones - once separated the main Willamette and McKenzie flows, requiring use of a ferry to move farm equipment to and from the fields.

A flood in 1964 altered the McKenzie's course and created a new confluence 4.5 miles upstream, or about 3 miles below Armitage Park. The abandoned streambeds on the east side of the main island still carry some water but mostly are remnants of a larger flow.

Trust officials hope to reanimate these dormant channels to boost populations of species whose numbers have dwindled in large part because of the loss of spawning and foraging habitat found among river islands.

"The river will find this area again," Grier said.

Though much of the main island was cleared to grow vegetables, peppermint, wheat, wildflower seed, cherries and other crops, many areas remain intact, including tranquil stands of cottonwood and maple, wetlands, ponds and miles of riparian habitat.

Grier said he knows of no other habitat restoration project in the Northwest that compares to Green Island, either in size or the diversity of highly valued habitat types.

"There's just nothing like it in the Willamette system," he said, calling the area a "biological hot spot" that nurtures juvenile chinook salmon, steelhead and bull trout, about 130 species of birds, and vanishing amphibians and reptiles, such as the red-legged frog and the western pond turtle.

Long-term restoration will rely in part on aerial photos dating to the 1930s and other clues to the area's natural history, and local farmers are expected to be enlisted to help with the transformation.

Public access to the site will be secondary to conservation priorities, to be carried out in collaboration with federal, state and local agencies, adjacent landowners and The Nature Conservancy.

"The bottom line is we don't know what's going to happen here," said Ryland Moore, managing director of the trust. "There's a thousand ideas, and we're all ears."

For now, the nonprofit organization will focus on completing the purchase. It has raised $400,000 to buy the land and needs another $600,000 by the end of June to keep its purchase option alive.

A key piece of the funding could come from state lottery revenue that Oregon voters earmarked for parks and restoration of salmon habitat. The trust has applied for $750,000 of those funds through the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board.

CAPTION(S):

Bold text and this is light text and this is more light text A western pond turtle basks in the sun while Canada geese swim by in one of the areas that the McKenzie River Trust is trying to purchase. Stephanie Barrow / The Register-Guard Kevin Clark / The Register-Guard Maple and cottonwood trees flourish, keeping out invasive plants like blackberries, on parts of Green Island that were never converted to farmland. Kevin Clark / The Register-Guard Trilliums brighten the forest floor on some of the 856 acres that McKenzie River Trust is trying to purchase.