Boones Ferry Project Tour & replanting with Cascade Education Corps
Just a few days before our Watershed Wide Event, TCWC had an exciting day in the field both with a student group and with several board members and partners:
On Thursday March 10th, TCWC’s Coordinator was out in the field with Cascade Education Corps (CEC), a program providing experiential education for underserved youth in the Tigard-Tualatin School District, thanks to funding from BES’ Community Watershed Stewardship Program. We were able revegetate a slope above Arnold Creek near the Boones Ferry Bridge, where some ivy had been anonymously removed. TCWC was able to provide plants and the CEC crew installed nearly 70 trees and shrubs, including Douglas fir, Cascare, Tall Oregon Grape, Vine Maple, and shrubs such as Oceanspray, Baldhip rose, red elderberry, snowberry, various ferns, and groundcover herbaceous species.
Because the CEC crew come prepared with a trailer to carry tools, we met at Bosky Dell Native Nursery that morning to load up the plants. This was a great chance for Bosky Dell’s Lory Duralia to show CEC around the nursery, and we were able to spot chipmunks, Douglas squirrels, lots of birds, and hear about the arc of restoration work Lory has implemented along the creek.
As it happened, our field date with CEC was the same one that Amin Wahab from Portland’s Bureau of Enviornmental Services provided a tour of the Boones Ferry Bridge project to TCWC’s Board members and several organizational partners (WMSWCD, WRC). Amin has been involved in the Boones Ferry project since 1996, and led us through the project timeline, opportunities, and constraints. All of the boulders used in the weirs were sourced from on-site! We also spoke together about future fish passage improvement projects and the opportunities on the horizon.
Due to being in the same area, CEC’s students and Program Coordinator & Crew Lead, Michelle Waldram, were able to join in on the tour to learn more about the feat that this project has accomplished for the benefit of the watershed. We were glad to see grassroots restoration modeled at Bosky Dell through our time with Lory, and to see large-scale engineered projects, both as opportunities to demonstrate environmental career pathways for CEC students!
Double thanks to the Bureau of Environmental Services for this great day: to Amin for the tour, and to BES’ Community Watershed Stewardshp Program for funding our time with Cascade Education Corps!
