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Signs of Restoration
By BENNETT HALL, Gazette-Times reporter | Friday, March 12, 2010
Calapooia Middle School students Bethany Ramirez, left, and Marisol Martinez carry banners to mount next to the Riverside Road land that is being converted from a grass seed field into wetland habitat. (Mark Ylen/Democrat-Herald)
ALBANY – Anna Roberts and Cayla Danforth were cold, wet and muddy. But it didn’t stop the two sixth-graders from planting three cottonwoods and a chokecherry in less than an hour on Ed Rust’s farm west of Albany on Thursday morning.
“Dig in right here,” instructed Anna, holding a small cottonwood sapling while her classmate plunged her shovel into the heavy, wet clay of a ryegrass field.
”At least it’s not quicksand,” Cayla said, her feet squishing in the ooze.
The girls were among the first wave of 250 Calapooia Middle School students who descended on Rust’s Riverside Drive property for a two-day project aimed at planting 950 trees. It’s part of a larger effort to restore the 200-acre farm from agricultural use to wildlife habitat.
Last year, Rust sold a conservation easement on the property to the Greenbelt Land Trust, which is managing the restoration work. Farming will be phased out over three years as ryegrass gives way to upland prairie, oak savanna, wetlands and riparian forest. Restoration of a portion of the Little Willamette Slough, a cutoff Willamette River flood channel that runs through the property, also is planned.
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current projects
Outreach and Education
Education of children, adults, and families continues throughout the year through nature walks, native plant restoration, and classes in the mid-Willamette Valley.
Many of these activities are organized and led by Greenbelt Land Trust in cooperation with our partners (See Events and Activities). For example, a recent nature walk for 18 children, teachers, and parents at Lupine Meadows had students identifying native plant species—including the endangered Kincaid’s lupine—and experiencing the special thrill of seeing the rare Fender’s blue butterfly flutter across the upland prairie.
We continue to provide staff and materials to help with outdoor classroom instruction, such as a project with sixth and eighth graders to familiarize them with plants along the Alsea River during the salmon migration. Students identified and drew plants, and wrote descriptions of them, in their journals.
In short, Greenbelt Land Trust represents a powerful antidote to the “Nature Deficit Disorder” increasingly afflicting American children!
Trails
GLT members and volunteers are currently working with the City of Corvallis to complete new trails and improve existing trails at Timberhill Open Space. See Events and Activities for upcoming trail workdays.