This spring, one hundred and thirty volunteers helped plant 3,850 native trees and shrubs including pacific willow, elderberry, ninebark, and thimbleberry. Our volunteers were as busy as beavers removing mats of invasive reed canarygrass and woody-rooted yellow flag iris as well as taking out more than 2 cubic yards of litter at our Nyberg, Cedar Mill,
Master Watershed Stewards from Marshfield High School spent two afternoons this winter learning about amphibians and being trained to identify and monitor their presence based on adults and egg masses surveyed in the wetland. Many thanks to our partner, the Coos Watershed Association for leading this study on our Matson Creek Preserve in Coos Bay, Oregon. Check
February 7, 2015 was our very first planting day of the year! We partnered with the City of Tualatin for a great productive work day. About 400 live stakes of red osier dogwood and willows were placed in the soft wetland ground by about 40 people. We also scoured the uplands for litter and huge pickup truck full
Last spring a beaver dam at our Hedges Creek Preserve (Tualatin) was breached by vandals, resulting in water levels dropping by a few feet in the beaver pond above.
Over the last few years I have become an avid birdwatcher. A friend of mine who is also a birdwatcher would talk at length about his “local patch.” I decided I needed to get a local patch too. A patch is a term for a spot that a birdwatcher can frequent regularly and get to