FOOTPATHS

Mike Houck points out a few facts about the Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge. Walk About joined Houck and others on the 2-mile hike observing birds, learning about native plants, and the history of how the refuge developed. Visit Urban Green Spaces website for a schedule of walks offered through out the year.

Map courtesy of Portland Parks & Recreation

Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge

By Mike Houck

Now one of Portland’s premier natural areas and home to more than 100 species of birds — including bald eagles, peregrine falcons, red-tailed hawks, merlin, and myriad waterfowl — Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge has not always been fully appreciated for its wildlife, open space, and scenic values.

In fact, in the late 1960s Oaks Pioneer Park was slated for industrial development, a site for the Children’s Museum, a locomotive museum, a yacht harbor, and soccer and baseball fields. The “Bottoms” suffered the ignominy of many wetlands — a repository for trash and demolition debris. The North Meadow received thousands of cubic feet of rubble from the Stadium Freeway (I-405), while the South Meadow smoldered into the late 1960s with household garbage and construction materials. And, as incredible as it may sound, the city recommended a 10-acre motorcycle facility be carved out of the Bottoms, a proposal that was quickly quashed under a flood of neighborhood letters lambasting the idea.

In the late 1960s, the Sellwood-Moreland Improvement League (SMILE) took the advocating lead for establishing Oaks Bottom as a city natural area, in large part to reduce noisy motorcycles that were tearing up the Bottoms and to rid the neighborhood of the smelly, smoky landfill. In 1972, Portland State University urban studies students developed a series of possible scenarios for the Bottoms, including urging the city to lease Oaks Bottom to the Audubon Society of Portland, which would manage the wetlands and riparian areas, with the North and South fills to be used for active recreation. Audubon countered that the entire Bottoms should be a wildlife refuge.

With the adoption of the Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge Management Plan in 1988, Portland City Council and Portland Parks and Recreation set a new course for the Bottoms and recognized the wetlands as the city’s first formally designated urban wildlife refuge. Recently, management of the Bottoms has shifted from earlier ad hoc, volunteer-based efforts to an ecosystem management plan crafted by ecologists from Portland Parks and Recreation and Bureau of Environmental Services, with input from the Audubon Society of Portland, Urban Greenspaces Institute, and Friends of Oaks Bottom.

Recent plans call for enlarging the culvert where water enters and leaves the wetland area with the pulses from the Willamette River. Periodic burns are being conducted in the North and South Meadows to control invasive species and diversity habitat. Over the past five years, acres of Himalayan blackberry, English ivy, and clematis have been removed from the bluff and replaced with grasses and native plants. A walk around the Bottoms provides a spectacular case study for invasive plant removal. The next most significant challenge facing the city and advocates will be linking these efforts with ecological restoration and management of the nearby Holgate Channel and Ross Island archipelago.

Walk Options:
Start the two-mile loop walk at the north end of Sellwood Park at SE 7th and SE Sellwood Boulevard. From SE Sellwood Boulevard is a spectacular view of the 160-acre Bottoms, Ross Island, and the downtown skyline. On a clear day you can see Mount St. Helens. Bald eagles and red-tailed hawks perch in the black cottonwoods and big-leaf maples and egrets, herons, and waterfowl can be seen in the wetland below. There is also a great view of the Portland Memorial Mausoleum mural being applied by ArtFX Murals and the Urban Greenspaces Institute. The wetland motif depicts resident and migratory birds in a wetland motif.

From SE Sellwood Boulevard, walk down the dirt path that leads from the map and interpretive sign down to the South Meadow. From there an unpaved path crosses the South Meadow to the Springwater on the Willamette Trail underpass. Walk up the ramp to the Springwater on the Willamette Trail where it’s a mile walk north to the North Meadow access and unpaved spur trail to the Holgate Channel overlook. Walk back from the overlook and across the Springwater on the Willamette Trail (being careful to avoid fast moving bicycles!) and pass under the railroad tracks on the paved North Meadow access trail that takes you to the uphill walk to the north parking lot, or connects to the unpaved path that continues at the foot of the bluff, past the base of the Portland Memorial Mausoleum and back to the switch back path up to Sellwood Park.

Mike Houck, Director of Urban Greenspaces Institute, co-edited Wild in the City, A Guide to Portland’s Natural Areas and leads walks, kayak trips and bicycle rides in the greater Portland region. For more information visit www.urbangreenspaces.org.