Come to the Beach!

Grab your boots and join us by the pond this Saturday July 10 at 10:00 A.M. as we use dip nets, buckets and magnifying glasses to explore the web of life in a coastal pond. The Mill Ponds event is great for kids of all ages!

The weather forecast looks good at this point, neverthless we recommend shoes and clothing that can get wet / dirty. This is a hands-on event after all. The walk around the ponds is about 1 mile, level ground with a well maintained trail, but we may be going off-trail a bit. Please leave pets at home.

The Seaside Mill Ponds are right in town, just south of the Public Works department off Avenue S. For more details and directions, follow this link.

And be sure to mark your calendars for our upcoming events, including Pollinators at Work July 24, and our yearly National Estuaries Day celebration September 25. Links to all our events can be found on our events page.

Thanks for your interest. See you outside!

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BP Allegedly Covered Oil Stained Beaches with Fresh Sand

Permit Rules Enforeced in Texas

"He [Al Armendariz - new regional EPA Manager for Texas SW] pulled the permit issued to the Flint Hills Resources refinery in Corpus Christi, which has been operating under permits issued by the TCEQ since 1952. The 300,000-barrel-per-day refinery, which has spent more than $2.8 billion since 1981 on “significant environmental upgrades,” must try to get a federal permit for the first time in Texas history to stay in business." From the San Angelo Standard-Times at http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/2010/jul/03/new-epa-official-shakes-up-environmental-scene/

Maybe this is a new era for peace, justice, and ... .why bother.

Oily Rain and Chemical Dispersants Destroying Crops in the South

What are we up to?

Here at Demeter Design we have some exciting new developments to share. In addition to having a new staff member, Jessica Stitcher, we have many wonderful and interesting projects happening throughout Oregon.

We are working with the North Fork John Day Watershed Council to synthesize habitat data within the North and Middle Fork John Day River Basins. The result will be housed in an Access database and available for download from our website this winter. A fun additional component! We are working with Sitka Technologies in Portland to house a web version of this database and allow mapping and prioritization on the fly via the interwebs. Finally CERP is going to be online!!! Only three years after trying to implement MapServer we resorted to what every red-blooded American does when strapped for time, we paid some one else to do it!

Additionally we are finishing a project for OWEB. We looked at riparian restoration projects throughout the South Coast and Grande Ronde basins to see how they held up over time. Check out the final report this fall!

We have a bunch of other projects, check out our website!

wine country notes

June 5 2010:

I am now in McMinnville, staying at a place that grows hay, straw, and a variety of fruit and veggies. My hosts, Barbara and Tom Boyer of Gourmet Hay, have been very kind to me so far. As well as serving customers here in the Yamhill Valley, the farm also sells to a few businesses that may be familiar to those of you in Portland. Two days ago we delivered a load of straw to Naomi's Organic Farm Supply in Sellwood. And earlier in the week I planted about 300 padrone peppers, which are sauteed and served whole at La Rumbla. The property fronts the South Yamhill, and I am glad to say that the riparian zone is well vegetated. Tom is converting some of his hay fields to conifer plantings, which should in the future provide that all important CWD. So it looks good from here, if we can just get some sunshine. Cheers.

June 21 2010:

Back in the metropolis after two weeks in wine country. Filled out my time with Ms. Jackie Dole at her farm. Three others and I shared a loft with twittering swallows. Enjoyed using compost toilet :) Jackie is an absolute sweetheart and if you are wwoofing the Yamhill Valley I encourage you to inquire with her. Her river frontage on the South Yamhill is weed dominated understory with decent native canopy...Premium pinot noirs are being sold below production costs under second or even third labels according to the NW Winepress. Vintners are concerned that this will affect consumer behavior even after this economic malaise lifts. I am sympathetic to this view, but when I buy a $7 bottle of Rascal at QFC, I recall fondly the days when Charles Shaw first sounded the call to bacchanal on the UC Berkeley campus...Overcast skies on the longest day of the year.

Scenery Sellers

I've recently come upon Wallace Stegner's nonfiction writing. How he previously escaped my attention, I don't know, but I've been captivated by him this past month. He manages to weave his emotional connection to western lands in with his knowledge of regulatory history in such a graceful manner.

"The Westerner is less a person than a continuing adaptation. The West is less a place than a process. And the western landscape that it has taken us a century and three quarters to learn about, and partially adapt our farming, our social institutions, our laws, and our aesthetic perceptions to, has now become our most valuable natural resource, as subject to raid and ruin as the more concrete resources that have suffered from our rapacity. We are in danger of becoming scenery sellers - and scenery is subject to as much enthusiastic overuse and overdevelopment as grass and water....We should all be forced to file an environmental impact study before we build so much as a privy or a summer cottage, much less a motel, a freeway, or a resort....I really only want to say that we may love a place and still be dangerous to it."

- Excerpt from "Thoughts in a Dry Land", Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West

Park Kitchen

Even though the sun hasn't been out for what seems like forever here in Portland, at least there's some good food around to make up for it. Park Kitchen is a terrific example of how great local cuisine can be, and it once again makes me thankful to live here (though this recent run of cloudy weather is doing its best to make me wish the sun would make an appearance once in a while).

Our server was incredibly knowledgeable and had even MET the actual pig being served for the braised pork plate (which - by the way - was terrific; a forager on staff gathers the nettles served alongside the pork, which really holds the flavor of the broth). Most of the food served at the restaurant comes from within 45 minutes of Portland (Sauvie Island, Square Peg Farm, etc.). However, they periodically serve Spanish fish rather than Northwestern; this may have been part of the problem with the poached halibut's lack of flavor, in that neither the halibut, cuttlefish, nor olive oil were local. Rogue River Blue Cheese turned the flank steak salad into something incredible (and I would expect nothing less from an award winning cheese). The chickpea fries with squash ketchup are certainly the healthiest version of french fries out there. If only mom had forced me to eat vegetables like that growing up, it may have been a different story at the dinner table!

Awareness of what we do

As restoration professionals, we spend a lot of time thinking about how our actions can impact the future of our world. In light of the amazing disaster that is underway in the Gulf, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the immensity of the problems we face as a species. It is equally challenging to determine a meaningful way as individuals to improve the world around us. Ultimately we all want to make an impact, usually in a positive way.

For my own part I am striving to focus on the things around me, to give them care and consideration, and to treat all living things with care and compassion. Although we spend a great of time professionally collecting and analyzing data, the sentence above could form the basis for almost all restoration and conservation plans: treat your world and those in it with respect.

Public access & private rivers

Senate Bill 1060 was defeated in February of this year in the Oregon State Senate. It would have allowed recreationists using waterways that are either floatable or tidally influenced to access private property adjacent to the water for the purposes of portage or medical emergency. As professional researchers of streams and waterways, we deal with streamside landowners on a regular basis. Over the course of many years we have learned that the issue of gaining public access to privately owned streams and streambanks is complex and challenging.

Conflicts between recreation, land management, and private landowners are unavoidable given the complex overlap of interests which takes place within a stream network. A first step should be to clarify the law surrounding public access to privately owned waterways. This bill would have done this by sanctioning access to all of the ground around the stream channel for the purposes of recreation. From a certain perspective, this might potentially have simplified our professional work by increasing access to the stream corridor. Despite this I feel it would have been inconsiderate to owners to allow access their property. If recreational use is sufficient to allow legal access to private property, it opens the door to other future public uses.

We suggest that some ways to address the issue of public use of privately owned waterways are to clarify the wording and implementation of existing law, to make it easier to identify the location of property boundaries, and to develop ways for property owners and potential users of the stream to communicate with one another. In our own work surveying streams throughout Oregon, we contact each individual landowner directly to obtain permission to collect data. This can be a time consuming and difficult process. Clarifying where streams can be accessed, and simplifying the granting of permission would be a major step in the right direction. A registry where landowners indicate their willingness to grant access for various activities such as fishing, hunting, and environmental research is one idea to streamline the process. The state would then provide the basics information (maps, phone numbers, etc.) needed to identify appropriate areas to access.

Currently those waterways designated as navigable are publicly owned, and generally have some limited public access. Logs and other debris are commonly removed from these waterways to ease boat passage, thus impacting stream health. It is concerning to think that expanded recreational usage of privately owner waterways might interfere with stream restoration and recovery. It is critical that any modification of existing laws consider the potential impacts to important stream and riparian habitat. The health and function of our streams and estuaries should be the first priority.

Summer in the Columbia Slough Watershed

The Columbia Slough Watershed Council is hosting plenty of activities this summer, providing an excellent chance to get involved for those in the Portland area. A few I'm looking forward to are:

June 19 - Explorando el Columbia Slough
July 25 - Columbia Slough Regatta
August 20 - Mystery Moonlight Paddle (especially excited about this one!)

Of course, there are always opportunities to volunteer as well:

Stewardship Saturdays (Meet at the CSWC on the second Saturday of the month to work on invasive species removal and trail maintenance)

Eyes on the Slough (individual volunteers who each paddle a section of the slough once a month to report on wildlife, habitat, and water quality)

These are terrific opportunities to get to know an integral part of Portland's backyard and enjoy a local watershed!

BP Oil Spill in Gulf

There are too many issues to discuss at this point and many reporters have already provided the info, here are some links to the LA Times which has some of the best reporting on the topic.

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-na-oil-spill-20100510,0,251714.story - BP trying to fix it.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-spill-20100509,0,1038312.story - BP unable to fix it.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-051010-na-oil_fix-i,0,2873419.htmlstory - How containment might work, if BP could manage it. Which I doubt they can since they could even manage to drill safely.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-rig-20100423-pictures,0,5444277.photogallery - Photo gallery, birds, sea turtles, sharks dead.

Tragedy is overused but it really is a tragedy. What is there left to do when this hasn't paused the movement to drill drill drill? Wait for more drilling? Even if only one in 10,000 or 1 in 1,000,000 drilling operations (I don't know the actual statistic) ends like this, the consequences are too great and the reward is too small.

Malheur, Umatilla, and Wallowa-Whitman National Forests Land Management Plan Meeting

The Forest Service held a series of public meetings to discuss the Malheur, Umatilla, and Wallowa-Whitman National Forests Land Management Plans throughout the month of April. Most of the meetings were held on the eastern portion of the state, though there was one meeting held in Northeast Portland on April 28th.

The first part of the meeting utilized an open house format where individuals could tour different displays which outlined particular functions of the management plan (fish, timber, recreation, wilderness areas, riparian impact, etc.). The second half brought all the interested parties together for a PowerPoint presentation that covered the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process. We are currently at the beginning of a two-year long process of assessing the plan, with an anticipated implementation of the new forest plan to take place in the spring of 2012. One individual raised a question regarding the costs associated with doing such a review, and we learned that the review process costs approximately $2,000,000 (or $1,000,000 per year).

Several other individuals posed questions as well - some resulting in fairly spirited debates. In particular, the point was raised that though the Forest Service often takes existing land and designates it as a wilderness area, the opposite never happens (once land is designated wilderness, that designation will not be removed). The regional director of the Forest Service was available for explanation, and indicated that the mandate from Congress solely deals with recommending wilderness areas rather than the reverse. Additionally, there was a smaller discussion regarding riparian management. One individual had spent a fair amount of time surveying in the Malheur NF and consistently saw extreme riparian area degradation. Despite all recommendations and assessments urging fencing or other barriers to be put in place, little progress appeared to have been made.

These management plans are revised every fifteen years,so it will be interesting to see how final product utilizes scientific knowledge gained since the mid 1990s. It's reassuring to know that we can all help guide the management of our forests.

Agriculture in Peril

News from the world of farming. Two big hits to agriculture productivity have recently blossomed: fruit fly feeds on ripe fruit, devastating peach, cherry, apple, pear crop; glyphosate resistant weeds force farmers to till weeds with herbicide increasing pollution and erosion.

The fruit fly is distinguishable from the common fruit fly by a spot on the tip of its wing and it will feed on ripe fruit rather than rotten fruit. I have seen traps out here on the Pacific Coast and I know they are already in the Willamette Valley. One recommendation for small orchardists and home owners is to cover the already pollinated fruit with a fine mesh. This will keep out the birds too.

For more information about glyphosate resistant weeds check out this article in the times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/business/energy-environment/04weed.html?pagewanted=2&ref=science

Urban Farm

I took a walk around my northeast Portland neighborhood this afternoon, and turned down a street that I hadn't been on for a few months. I came across three chickens making their way across the street (I had to hold my Labrador back from chasing them - unfortunately, he doesn't quite get the idea of peaceful coexistence yet), and also passed a goat in a fenced yard. I feel like most of Portland is an urban farm; everyone quietly wishing they lived in the country and doing what they can to make that a reality on their standard 50' x 100' lots. If I have to live in a city, this is one I'm happy to call home.