Me at the anatomy table with female (front) and male Chinook salmon

Metro’s

Nature University

Changing lives

Neyssa Hays

Metro Parks and Greenspaces

In 1977 Oregon State Legislature approved a new design for government based on the need for the metropolitan region to be more unified in it’s planning for transportation, water use, and urban growth. Known then as the Metropolitan Service District, Metro was approved by voters and began operations in 1979. Initially responsible for defining the first urban growth boundary, planning for solid waste disposal, transportation planning and running the Washington Park Zoo (now the Oregon Zoo), Metro has expanded greatly in it’s governance, and is viewed not only as a leader for the region, but also as a model to other metropolitan areas across the country. While still maintaining it’s initial responsibilities, voters have also added to Metro the operation of many educational and entertainment facilities, including the Expo Center, Keller Auditorium, Portland Center for the Performing Arts, Civic Stadium, Memorial Coliseum, and the Oregon Convention Center. Additionally, Metro has become exemplary in parks planning and operations.

In 1992, Metro Council initiated the “Metropolitan Greenspaces Master Plan,” much of which followed the 1904 plan of visionary Frederick Olmsted. In drawing up what came to be known as the 40 Mile Loop, Olmsted stated that,

“Parks should be connected and approached by boulevards and parkways...They should be located and improved to take advantages of the beautiful natural scenery. The above system of scenic reservations, parks and park-ways and connecting boulevards would...form an admirable park system for such an important city as Portland is bound to become.” (40-Mile Loop)

Such an ambitious goal took a lot of time to truly be realized, but Metro is working steadfastly on plans that expand those ideas. Shortly after Metro implemented their parks plan, Multnomah County requested that Metro take over the county parks, including Blue Lake and Oxbow Park. Visitation to the parks is very high; in 2004 “more than 12,000 people attend[ed] special events at Metro parks and

greenspaces, including [Oxbow’s] Salmon Festival and Blue Lake’s Fourth of July Celebration” (Metro). Recognizing the need to conserve natural urban green areas for future generations, in 1995 voters sanctioned a $135 million bond measure for the purpose of obtaining and maintaining open spaces, parks, and streams. Since then Metro has obtained and at least partially restored over 8,000 acres for perpetuity and linked them with more than 500 miles of trails (950 miles of bicycle/pedestrian trails are planned). Restoration projects have been as complicated as turning industrial parks and landfills into open wildlife habitats. To accomplish these monumental tasks, Metro partners with organizations such as the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, The Autzen Foundation, and local community members.

Great Egret on grass covered garbage hill at the decommissioned St. Johns Landfill. Pipes siphon methane gas, which is sold for use as natural gas.

Head Naturalist Deb Scrivens with Volunteer Coordinator John Sheahan

Nature University

Begun in 1995 by Head Naturalist Deb Scrivens, Nature University is an annual intensive training program in which volunteers learn to engage others in discovery learning activities such as animal tracking, edible and poisonous plant identification, water creature identification, and other nature skills. Scrivens began what would grow into the nature education program in 1984 as the first seasonal naturalist at Oxbow Park. At that time the 1,200 acre park was still operated by a funding challenged Multnomah County, and Scrivens found that the nature program she was given charge of consisted of little more than a picnic table and “Ranger Rick” magazines. To add to

the challenge, instead of the forty hours a week she expected to put into building the program, Scrivens found that she was allotted twenty hours as a naturalist and expected to work the other twenty hours as a seasonal worker. “It was a famine mentality,” Scrivens said, with everyone scrambling to stretch the budget. For the next five years Scrivens worked seasonally in this manner, slowly building a nature program. She was then hired permanently and began looking for funding to hire another naturalist, which she obtained through a grant in 1991. She now has two permanent staff naturalists and one seasonal who work creatively together to organize the education department that includes Nature University.

As Metro completed the takeover of the county parks in 1995, Scrivens held the first Nature University. The course is twelve weeks long, meeting every Tuesday from late January to mid April, 9:30-2:00 and most of the classes are held outdoors, rain or shine, so dedication is absolutely necessary. In general, twenty new volunteers graduate every year and begin an exciting new chapter to their lives. According to volunteer coordinator John Sheahan, the program currently has roughly forty active volunteer naturalists, including those who graduated from the program this past April. Participants agree to fulfill a minimum of forty hours of volunteer service over one year in exchange for this free training. The program has been known to change and redirect many lives, including mine.

Staff Naturalist James Davis gives volunteers last minute instructions

The Sandy River at Oxbow Park

My Involvement With Metro

I enrolled in Metro’s Nature University in 2004. My experiences through the course set me on a path I’m surprised I hadn’t seen before. Inspired to keep my life moving forward, before the class was over I started working in the parks and had registered for classes at Portland State University with the goal of becoming a professional park naturalist. I’ve since worked three seasons as a park ranger and have volunteered in some capacity every year.

As a naturalist, I guide groups of people of all ages on interpretive walks through old growth forests, wild wetlands, and inner-city parks. We play games in the dirt, learn how to track animals, learn the importance of the smallest of creatures, as well as to appreciate the beauty of 1000-year-old trees. The majority of these activities take place at either Oxbow or Smith and Bybee Wetlands and Wildlife Preserve in North Portland (at 2,000 acres, the largest urban wetland in the United States).

I also designed and implemented a program for an urban preschool whose access to nature was limited to the Park Blocks at Portland State University. Among other things, I used the children’s natural inclination towards pretend and some animal tracks of paint on paper to create a story with them of coyotes (played by us) tracking and attempting (unsuccessfully) to capture a rabbit. I showed them how to create the story of animal movements using bird tracks that imitated a bird walking, then being startled to fly to another location, and a deer whose tracks crossed those of the coyote and rabbit. And I brought in many natural materials such as sticks with beetle burrows and “oak apples” from the forest that we used to create art pieces and simply explore. Additionally, I brought in containers with water from Smith Lake that contained such wonderful creatures as leeches, boatmen, and Damsel fly larvae; the children explored these using white dish tubs and magnifying glasses (techniques designed by Metro Naturalist James Davis for use at Smith and Bybee Wetland).

Smith Lake at Smith and Bybee Wetlands

Resources 40-Mile Loop Land Trust, 2004. Portland, Oregon

http://www.40mileloop.org/index.html Metro: People Places Open Spaces, 2007. Portland, Oregon.

http://www.metro-region.org/ All photos by Neyssa Hays