Making a splash.

Byline: Mike Stahlberg The Register-Guard

Drought or not, American Wetlands Month will make a splash in Eugene during May.

The West Eugene Wetlands will be the focus of a variety of public nature-appreciation events to be held during the coming month.

Activities range from bird and butterfly talks to wildlife and wildflower walks, plus an array of educational events for school children (See "Wetlands Events" listing, Page E5). In addition, many hikers, bikers and nature lovers are expected to visit the area on their own, perhaps with the help of a self-guided interpretive brochure available at information kiosks.

For people who may not be familiar with the West Eugene Wetlands, "May is an ideal time to visit" because wildflower displays will be at their peak, said Eric Wold, wetlands manager for the city of Eugene. The fact that some areas may be slightly less muddy than normal shouldn't detract from visitors' experiences.

This is the third year that the consortium of agencies involved in the wetlands partnership - Willamette Resources and Educational Network - has made a concerted effort to celebrate wetlands month.

They want to call attention to the West Eugene Wetlands, 3,000 acres of open land in the Amazon Creek and Willow Creek drainages on both sides of West 11th Avenue.

Increasing public awareness and appreciation of the area is seen as a prelude to a public fund-raising campaign being counted on to help fund a $12 million education center planned for the site.

The West Eugene Wetlands are considered special because they include much of the remaining "Willamette Wet Prairie Habitat" that dominated the Willamette Valley before the settlers arrived.

More than 350 species of plants live in the wetlands, including several listed as "threatened" or "endangered" by the federal government.

Wildlife utilizing the area include about 200 species of birds. The Fenders blue butterfly, an endangered species, resides there.

All this is located just four miles from downtown Eugene and is accessible by auto, public transportation and the Fern Ridge Path, a paved trail that runs 7.5 miles from the Lane County Fairgrounds.

The close-in location makes the wetlands a natural environmental education classroom and urban play area.

About 1,800 people, including about 1,200 students, participated in formal educational activities there during wetlands month last year, according to WREN's 2004 annual report.

Throughout the entire 2003-04 school year, "we had total 2,951 students that either came out here for field trips or we went into their classrooms and made presentations," said Holly McRae, education coordinator.

Countless other visitors come to the area on their own throughout the year.

The West Eugene Wetlands are also beginning to attract attention beyond Lane County.

Last year, the area received a national "Hands on the Land award," according to Doug Huntington, spokesman for the Eugene District Bureau of Land Management.

In essence, that means West Eugene Wetlands were added to a national network of field classrooms sponsored by Partners in Resource Education, a collaboration of five federal agencies, a non-profit foundation, schools and private-sector partners.

"Ours is one of just about a dozen Bureau of Land Management sites nationwide singled out as premier environmental education facilities," Huntington said.

That means the Eugene wetlands area will be associated with "areas such as the Red Rocks out of Las Vegas" in national publicity about interesting and educational natural areas, Huntington said.

Speaking of publicity, Sunset Magazine recently published a short article on the Meadowlark Prairie/Fern Ridge Bike Path portion of the West Eugene Wetlands.

WREN, which manages the wetlands, is an affiliation of public agencies and private nonprofit groups.

Members include the BLM, the City of Eugene, The Nature Conservancy, Oregon Youth Conservation Corps, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the McKenzie River Trust and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In 2004, WREN was nominated for a national "Take Pride in America" award from the U.S. Department of Interior. It also was a nominee for state "Environmental Education Program of the Year."

American Wetlands Month was launched in 1991 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in partnership with other government agencies and private groups, as "a way to educate Americans about the worth of wetlands as a natural resource."

WREN began promoting the event in earnest locally in 2003, as a way of generating awareness of, and support for, its efforts to fund and build a Wetlands Education Center.

The proposed center would be located on a knoll near the confluence of Amazon and Willow creeks, just north of West 11th Avenue and east of Danebo Avenue. It is expected to house classrooms, a laboratory, a wetlands reference library, offices, plus exhibit and assembly halls. The cost would be about $12 million.

It has taken longer than expected to break ground on the education center project, said Pat Johnston, the Bureau of Land Management's wetlands manager.

"One of the things that has really held us up," said Johnston, is that the 12-acre site on which the center will be built is in federal ownership, and federal rules make it extremely difficult to built a facility that would be run by a non-federal entity.

Legislation that will transfer ownership of the land from the BLM to the City of Eugene is expected to pass soon, she said.

Incorporating two new partners - the Eugene and Bethel school districts - into the planning and financing of the Education Center also has taken time, she said.

WREN has contracted with a capital campaign consulting firm to help develop a fund-raising campaign to raise private money needed to supplement what's available from the City of Eugene and the school districts.

"It's really important to emphasize that it's not about a building. The building may help us improve our capacity to do more field trip groups on inclement days, but it's really about the experience that happens when you're out there," Johnston said.

Meanwhile, the West Eugene Wetlands are a growing, evolving entity.

Since WREN's first big "wetlands month" celebration in 2003, nearly 500 acres have been added to the complex at a cost of about $2.5 million, Wold said.

Another $850,000 or so has been spent on restoration projects, such as replacing planted ryegrass with native vegetation and creating western pond turtle habitat in the Dragonfly Bend area of Amazon Creek.

West Eugene Wetlands preservation has been expensive.

Those projects pushed wetlands spending to more than $38 million. Sources of the money, spent over the past dozen years, include the Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Land and Water Conservation Fund, the Army Corps of Engineers, the City of Eugene, Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board and the McKenzie River Trust. Most went for land acquisition.

WREN is looking for additional land that include habitat types meriting preservation, Wold said, including some oak savannah.

The area's recreational amenities are also expanding. Improvements in the past two years include opening of Checkermallow Access off Royal Avenue (the other key access point is Meadowlark Prairie Overlook on Greenhill Road), and additional and upgraded trails. Plus, more interpretive signs have been produced, as well as informational brochures available at the site.

The money has also gone toward land acquisition and restoration costs and on improvements such as the Fern Ridge Bike Path Extension.

CAPTION(S):

Laurie Boldt, environmental education intern for the West Eugene Wetlands, shows third- and fourth-graders from Eastside School what they found in their nets during a tour of the wetlands along Amazon Creek in west Eugene. Willamette Resources Education Network The $12 million education center planned for the West Eugene Wetlands is shown in an artist's rendering. "It's really important to emphasize that it's not about a building ... but it's really about the experience that happens when you're out there." PAT JOHNSTON BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT WETLANDS MANAGER