Wild Society

Many are familiar with the Vancouver Lake lowlands and Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge in Clark County, Washington, together a mirror image of the Sauvie Island complex on the Oregon side of the border. Clark County, along with federal, state and non-profit organizations, has assembled key pieces of the lowlands over a 30-year period as a conservation legacy for future generations. Vancouver Lake and Ridgefield are two of the best known natural areas in the county, but there are many others to discover. 

Clark County’s Legacy Lands Program, managed by the Environmental Services Department, was instituted in October 1985, when the Board of County Commissioners adopted a small property tax levy of 6.25 cents per $1,000 of valuation to protect open space from threats such as urban development and habitat degradation. Protected greenspaces provide a vital green infrastructure that connects our community, protects our water and air, preserves corridors for wildlife, and provides recreational opportunities.  

To celebrate 30 years of success, we hope to introduce you to three less familiar gems in our system. Directions to and information about sites highlighted below, and other engaging natural sites, can be found at www.clark.wa.gov/legacylands. We are also programming a series of special events throughout 2015 to pique your interest in our unique contributions to The Intertwine.

La Center Bottoms and the Lower East Fork Lewis Greenway

The free-flowing East Fork of the Lewis River is home to native runs of Chinook, Coho and Chum salmon, and winter and summer steelhead. The lower floodplain offers hundreds of acres of bottomland habitat for waterfowl and other species. Clark County and its partners have assembled more than 2,000 acres of land from the confluence of the East Fork and North Fork Lewis Rivers to Lewisville Park near Battle Ground. While much of this land is protected for its habitat value and has limited public access, La Center Bottoms offers a window into this bottomland system. 

From the trailhead on 3rd St. in La Center, follow the handicap-accessible path to a small bridge across a burbling brook in an oak stand. Past the bridge, the path turns to gravel. Soon you will arrive at a waterfowl viewing blind where you may see migrating tundra swans feeding on camas bulbs in the wetland ponds. Migrating salmon smolts also use the ponds for refuge and forage. From the large bridge across Brezee Creek, there is an expansive view of the bottomland landscape. As you look upstream, know that most of the bottomlands on the south side of the river are protected. Continuing over the bridge, the trail narrows and follows the levee, providing more intimate views of the river. 

For an on-water experience, the City of La Center has constructed a small canoe/kayak launch just under the La Center Road Bridge downstream of the trailhead. This reach of the river is tidally influenced. Time it right, and ease your upstream paddle on the incoming tide. Then drift downstream with the current back to the put-in, or, for the adventurous, all the way to the Columbia River, ducking into Lake River to a take-out at the Port of Ridgefield. 

Salmon-Morgan Creeks Natural Area

For an upland experience, explore the 81-acre Salmon-Morgan Creeks Natural Area in the southwest corner of Battle Ground. Ancient cedar stumps, harvested in the early 1900s, nurse a new generation of life. A mature mixed-conifer forest has grown up around them, offering a variety of experiences. You might hear the drumming of a pileated woodpecker echo through the forest. You might stumble across a rough-skinned newt crossing one of the soft surface trails. Trilliums brighten the forest floor in spring. From an overlook, you can view the confluence of Salmon Creek and its tributary, Morgan Creek. Western pearlshell mussels can be found in Morgan Creek, and Coho salmon smolts rear under the cooling forest canopy well into summer.

Lower Washougal Greenway

The Lewis and Washougal River systems are the two primary systems we expect to contribute to the recovery of salmon and steelhead populations in Clark County. The City of Camas, Clark County and other partners have managed to assemble an 100-acre greenway along the Lower Washougal River. The City recently completed a 1.5 mile-long handicap-accessible trail from which you can get a first-hand view of the river. 

From downtown Camas, travel east and turn right onto NE 3rd Loop, just past Lacamas Creek, to the trailhead. A short downhill switchback will take you to a boardwalk that lightens the impact of foot traffic through the floodplain. During the spring freshet you might get wet feet. Ascending out of the floodplain, a bridge leads you from the north bank to the south bank of the river. Spectacular views up and down the river await from the top of the bridge. February through May you might see salmon and steelhead spawning in the gravels below. The trail continues through a reclaimed gravel mine that is now a series of ponds connected with the river and enhanced with large wood to improve fish habitat. Shortly past the gravel mine, the eastern trailhead awaits off of NE Yale St.

For a longer outing, check out the trailhead for Lacamas Lake Regional Park and its 9.5 mile trail system, one block west of 3rd Loop on 3rd St.  

Many of us remember walking or bicycling to and from school as children. In fact, a generation ago, in 1969, nearly 50 percent of the U.S. population did so. Today that figure stands at 13 percent.

There are a number of reasons for this drop, and one of them is a lack of sidewalks, crosswalks, safe bike lanes, and other student-friendly infrastructure around our schools. As it turns out, it’s not just students who are having a hard time getting around. 

It’s no secret to anyone who’s thought about or tried it: There are far too many places in our region that you cannot walk to, or from, and where most people would never, ever consider riding a bike. It’s probably not a coincidence that although 18 percent of us in the Portland metropolitan region choose to walk, bicycle and use transit to get to our destinations, little more than half of all roadways in the region have sidewalks on both sides of the road. And we spend only 3 percent of our total transportation budget on walking, bicycling and trails projects. 

The reality is that too often transit-access projects, projects that improve safe routes around schools and neighborhood centers, and projects that provide healthy options for traveling distances shorter than 3 miles (which account for 44 percent of all trips, and could easily be replaced by walking or bicycling) have not traditionally been successful in a constrained funding environment. The reality is that most people do not recognize or understand the benefit of solidly investing in active transportation projects, or of the benefit they bring to the transportation system we all rely upon.

We have some work to do if we are to reach our regional and state goals of more people walking and bicycling, improved freight mobility through reduced traffic congestion, and lower tailpipe emissions. 

The Intertwine’s Active Transportation Forum held in January was but one piece of an ongoing conversation under the banner idea that how we get there matters. After a panel of eight presenters each “made the case” from their unique perspectives — including health, travel-demand management, economic benefit and more — participants dove into table discussions to help frame the answer to the question, “How should we define walking, bicycling, trails and transit-access transportation projects in order to succeed in a constrained funding environment?”

We know there is a great need to continue these conversations, and to add to them, which was confirmed by the energy in the room and the difficulty keeping the conversation to one topic at a time. We are already at work planning the next forum, and welcome your input. 

Over the next few months, comments and ideas gathered during the “How We Get There Matters” forum will be analyzed and refined into a report to be made public here. It will focus on the outcomes from active transportation projects and how they can be better laid against our region and state's goals for transportation, health, climate, community, equity, environment and more. The report aims to provide outcomes and criteria demonstrating the regional significance of active transportation and transit access projects. 

The Metro regional goal is to triple the percentage of people choosing to walk or bicycle to 36 percent by 2040. How we get there does matter!

When you walk through Cooper Mountain Nature Park or ride your bike along the Springwater Corridor, you’re following in the footsteps of Jim Desmond.

Desmond arrived at Metro nearly two decades ago to launch the greater Portland region’s first natural areas program. Over the course of two bond measures and a levy, he helped transform voters’ investments into 14,000 acres of protected land, four new nature parks, hundreds of community projects, and 2.5 million new native trees and shrubs.

In January, Desmond left his post as director of Metro’s Sustainability Center to lead the Oregon chapter of The Nature Conservancy. First, he took time to reflect on the region’s movement to protect its iconic landscapes.

Below are highlights of the Q&A, originally published in Metro News. Read the full interview here.

Q: Before you came to Metro, you worked on the campaign to pass the first successful natural areas bond measure for the region. Tell me a little bit about it.

A: I was working as a project manager for the Trust for Public Land at the time, and they assigned me as their liaison to the campaign. The sense of possibility was great. There was definitely confidence that the measure could pass, but it being so new, no one was quite sure. Looking back on it, interestingly, one of the questions that came up a lot was Metro’s capacity to do this work. Metro had never acquired a single acre of land at that point. So it was really having to instill a sense of confidence in the public that this money would be well spent.

Q: So after the campaign you came to Metro to launch the natural areas program. What was it like that first day? How did you build a team?

A: It really couldn’t have been more “startup.” I tell people that it was like running this new real estate company in the basement of a government building, with the exception that we had $135 million in the bank, and a very clear mandate from the voters of what we were supposed to accomplish.

Q: When you talk about it “feeling startup,” did you have a sense what it would grow into?

A: To be honest, what’s achieved has been beyond my best-case scenario. When we got here, the 6,000-acre goal seemed really daunting. There was no national precedent for that. I tried to find a program somewhere else in the country that had done something similar, that I could go visit and learn from. What I found out was it just hadn’t been done at this scale in a metropolitan area. There were places that owned 6,000 acres, but they had acquired it all at once. It was daunting.

Q: Now, over the course of two bond measures and two decades, Metro has protected more than 14,000 acres. What comes to mind when you look across that portfolio?

A: To a certain extent, for me, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I can look at areas like the Tualatin River, where we’ve bought dozens of properties on the main stem of the river, some headwater sites on various creeks and numerous headwater sites on the 1100-acre Chehalem Ridge. Being the director, I have the privilege of having somewhat of a bird’s-eye view on the whole thing. I can see the huge impact that these two bond measures have had on these resources.

At the same time, when I really sit and think about it, there are individual places and people that I really gravitate to. There are certain places I’m just particularly fond of – Clear Creek, for example. We bought a 500-acre complex that was mostly a former ranch. It’s really a spectacular property; it’s state-park quality, one of the early things we bought. I hold a deep personal affection for that site and a number of others.

Q: Tell me about one place in the portfolio that seemed impossible when you started.

A: The highest degree of difficulty is a project that’s still in process: the Willamette Falls Legacy Project in Oregon City. The first time I visited the property I was completely overwhelmed by the cement, the 57 buildings there that encompass 900,000 square feet of industrial space, most of which was in an extremely dilapidated condition. It was like an incoherent labyrinth of buildings that were put together over a hundred years. You can’t walk through it with any sense of organization or structure.

Here’s this waterfall that’s by volume the second largest in North America. The first time you stand at the edge of the dam there and look at it, it’s such a staggering natural resource, your jaw drops. The idea that we could turn that into a public asset where people could walk out and have the same experience that I was having there, seemed worth doing. But when I got back to the office and thought about what I’d seen out there, it also seemed like the craziest, most audacious goal we could ever have.

Here we are, three years later. We have a public easement across the riverfront; we have a strong partnership with a private developer; we have partners at the state, county and city level; we’ve secured over $10 million in funds to begin the development of a public walkway. We’ve had thousands of citizens weigh in on their aspirations there and drafted a concept master plan for the future.

Q: As you know, Metro is developing a plan that will shape our system of regional parks and natural areas for decades to come. If we are bold, what can the region achieve?

A: We have the raw materials now in the way of 14,000 acres. Some of those might not be appropriate for public access – they’re too wet, too sensitive, too steep. But many of them could be spectacular nature parks. They don’t need a lot of bells and whistles. There are plenty of places where a simple, self-guided set of trails and maybe one bathroom and a small parking lot would allow thousands of citizens to experience and explore these places, and really convert what we’ve done from places on a map to real place-making on the ground in ways that will become really special.

There are also terrific opportunities for conservation education, community building, work parties and community-based restoration projects. Just what we’ve seen from our experience with the three parks we opened a few years ago – Cooper Mountain in Beaverton, Graham Oaks in Wilsonville, and Mount Talbert in the Sunnyside area of Clackamas County – imagine if we had seven, eight, 10 more of those. The impact it would have in the community is significant.

On top of that, we’ve got 900 miles of trail segments that are shown on the regional plan adopted as future trails but haven’t been built yet. When you begin to link these places or link them to some regional centers like downtown Beaverton or downtown Hillsboro, schools or other natural areas, then you build a world-class system.