The Ashland Daily Tidings highlighted two nonprofit organizations, Lomakatsi Restoration Project and the Northwest Forest Worker Center, that recently received awards from Meyer for ecosystem restoration and forest work.
Here's what how the Daily Tidings described work the grants support:
Jobs carried out by restoration workers (for Lomakatsi) include planting trees along streams and clear-cuts, pulling invasive weeds and thinning dense, fire-suppressed forests. Both organizations have worked to combat the abuse of forest workers and sub-standard working conditions.
The Northwest Forest Workers Center's Promotora Program employs women from the forest worker community in Medford to train forest workers in preventing on-the-job injuries and educate them about their rights. Lomakatsi's partnership with tribal communities as well as its 40-person technical and on-the-ground workforce has focused on forest worker training and building the range of skills of forest workers since Lomakatsi was founded.
You'll find the full story, including grant amounts here.
One way to gauge commitment to a community-driven restoration initiative: Host a conference in the middle of a snow and ice storm, and see how many people show up.
Despite Mother Nature’s curveball, the Willamette River Initiative’s 4th biennial Within Our Reach conference last week drew a sold-out crowd of nearly 220 people to Oregon State University. Together, the group of scientists, conservation nonprofit staff, government agency representatives, landowners and academics assessed the achievements they’ve made nearly eight years into Meyer’s 10-year commitment to fund efforts to improve the health of the Willamette River.
This community’s successes are many. Over four thousand streamside acres restored. Miles of floodplain reconnected to the river. New science to increase our collective understanding of river health and restoration opportunities. New partnerships to find solutions to regional and basin-wide concerns.
But a key question remains: How to continue and build on the momentum created after Meyer’s current 10-year funding commitment ends?
Although Team Willamette has made dramatic progress toward a healthier Willamette River watershed, there is much left to do. Ten years in the life of a river — especially one as large and complex as the Willamette — is not enough time to finish the job.
In a speech during the conference’s second morning, Allison Hensey, director of the Willamette River Initiative, shared that Meyer is committed to supporting a strong transition beyond its 10-year initiative to enable the community to continue and increase alignment and impact. One possible approach is co-creation of an organization to support the development of a shared vision and goals, fundraising, storytelling, data collection and monitoring.
At the conference, attendees discussed Willamette River challenges most in need of a collective approach and the kind of support needed to successfully address those challenges. They also began exploring the concept of a Willamette River Network to live well beyond the sunset of Meyer's decade-long initiative, and how such a network could add value to their work.
Tackling the challenges of the future will take a sustained commitment to an effort even bigger, more connected and more ambitious than the Willamette River Initiative. A strong, well-organized network could provide the support system for such an effort.
Meyer will convene a planning process early next year to support co-creation of a network concept with the Willamette River community. We’ll share more as plans continue to unfold. Meanwhile, we thank this incredible community of Willamette River advocates for their commitment to the watershed we call home.
The Willamette River Initiative's bi-annual conference, Within Our Reach, brings together more than 200 people with a stake in the river to discuss restoration efforts in the Willamette basin.
The Corvallis Gazette-Times reports on the conference, where discussion looked ahead to the end of the initiative's work, set for 2019:
Since 2008, the Meyer Memorial Trust has been pumping about $1.5 million a year into the Willamette River Initiative, an ambitious program of environmental restoration projects along the river’s mainstem and throughout the web of tributary streams that feed it.
That money has been used to leverage additional funding sources, creating a powerful multiplier effect that has fueled a massive pulse of work aimed at protecting native fish and wildlife species, restoring floodplain connections and channel complexity, and improving the overall health of the Willamette River system.
But the initiative was never intended to continue indefinitely, and now it’s nearing the end of its 10-year lifespan. In March 2019, the program’s original funding stream is scheduled to dry up.
Wanna learn more about the conference? Read the whole story at the gazettetimes.com.
Portland State University’s Institute for Sustainable Solutions has formed a new partnership with Neighbors for Clean Air and Lewis & Clark Law School’s Northwest Environmental Defense Center to pursue cleaner, healthier air for all Oregonians.
The partnership, BREATHE Oregon, will provide clear scientific data, legal analysis and community outreach so residents and policy makers have the information they need to make decisions that improve air quality in Portland and throughout Oregon.
BREATHE Oregon builds on a research partnership launched last spring between the Institute for Sustainable Solutions, the City of Portland and Multnomah County to assess heavy metal pollution in Portland-metro neighborhoods in response to community concerns about elevated levels of toxins found in the area.
“The BREATHE Oregon partnership helps ensure that meaningful scientific research about local air pollution moves from PSU labs into the hands of community advocates and policymakers,” said Robert Liberty, director of the PSU Institute for Sustainable Solutions.
Linda George, PSU professor of environmental science and fellow of the Institute for Sustainable Solutions is leading PSU’s research efforts. “It’s our hope that our research will engage local residents and inform future air quality oversight in our state,” George said.
A $250,000 Meyer Memorial Trust grant funds the partnership. In addition to scientific and legal analysis of air quality data and impacts, the award supports a series of community symposiums and a fleet of student interns who will work with local organizations to expand outreach about air quality issues.
“The path toward cleaner air is complex, and informed community involvement is essential,” said Mary Peveto, the co-founder and president of Neighbors for Clean Air. “Through BREATHE Oregon, we’ll work with communities most affected by air pollution to ensure they have access to accurate and relevant information and a seat at the table. We’re excited about collaborating with our neighbors, our university, and our state regulatory offices for healthier air.”
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and Oregon Health Authority are in the process of overhauling industrial air toxic regulations to align them with public health, as directed by Gov. Kate Brown’s Cleaner Air Oregon initiative. The Cleaner Air Oregon advisory committee includes representatives from each of the BREATHE Oregon partner organizations, providing a direct connection between academic research, community advocacy, legal analysis and policy recommendations.
“State health experts and regulators depend on accurate, scientifically sound data and engaged, well-informed communities to protect the health of Oregonians,” said Lynne Saxton, director of the Oregon Health Authority. “We welcome the partnership of Meyer Memorial Trust and the grantees to achieve cleaner air in our state.”
- Laura Gleim, Institute for Sustainable Solutions
It’s no secret that the lack of equity and diversity in Oregon’s environmental movement has been an issue for decades. So we weren’t surprised that many Healthy Environment portfolio applications focused on building organizational capacity for effective diversity, equity and inclusion work. After all, every journey starts where you are.
The Healthy Environment portfolio awarded seven grants to fund technical assistance focused solely on diversity, equity and inclusion. Common activities included training staff and board, developing an equity strategy and integrating diversity, equity and inclusion into an organizational strategic plan.
Several of these grantees are in the beginning stages of equity work — a crucial moment to build capacity. We look forward to continued support for this foundational work as a precursor to implementation. For organizations that are further along in their equity journeys, we are also supporting implementation of equity priorities, which is woven into many of the projects and organizations that we funded this round, although the descriptions of these grants on our awards database doesn’t label them as being for “equity implementation.” Examples of these efforts include creating a statewide environmental justice coalition, integrating equity into climate change policy and supporting economic development with tribes and rural, low-income communities.
Developing foundational elements for diversity, equity and inclusion work creates a stronger, inclusive, resilient and more successful environmental movement. We foresee continuing to support this work in future grant cycles. We also plan to continue funding the implementation of organizational and programmatic equity priorities. Something to consider if your organization is at the beginning stage of equity work and looking to partner with Meyer: we don’t recommend applying for both capacity building and implementation of DEI at the same time. It’s difficult to predict exactly what your implementation needs are before you complete planning and other foundational work.
Overall, I am extremely grateful to work at a foundation that is both walking the equity talk and lifting up grantees in their equity journey, especially by supporting organizations committed to equity and growth over time whether they are at the beginning or advanced stage of this work. I look forward to working with Meyer’s current and future grantees in creating a flourishing and equitable Oregon.
Eight months after Meyer launched new grant programs in April, the first official funding round of the Healthy Environment portfolio is complete. We know that many of you are curious about how it all played out — and not just in the Healthy Environment portfolio but in the other new portfolios as well. To read more about that, please check out Candy Solovjov’s blog.
Before I share some reflections on the Healthy Environment portfolio grants batch, I need to acknowledge that I started drafting this weeks ago and am struggling to situate it in the aftermath of the election. It’s impossible for me to not acknowledge that the results have fanned the flames of racial bias, white privilege, sexism, misogyny and other forms of oppression that are deeply entrenched in our nation’s dominant culture. It’s also impossible to ignore that this same extractivist mindset not only systematically harms certain groups of people more than others, but it also drives the depletion of nature and degradation of environmental health.
When I consider where Meyer and its equity mission sit within this context in Oregon, I see one of our roles as speaking up for the values of inclusion and opportunity for all. It’s also our responsibility to support and amplify the efforts that aim to uproot all types of oppression and extractivism, and particularly where these intersect, that operate in communities across Oregon. We must support efforts to unify our communities. This takes long-term commitment and vigilance.
Today, more than ever, there is a troubling shadow over the outlook for progress on environmental protection and conservation. Clean energy policies and climate agreements may be repealed or defunded. We may see rollbacks on clean air and water protections as well as efforts to undermine the progress we have made on public lands management and protection efforts. Progress toward self-governance by Oregon tribes associated with protecting first foods and natural resources may be at risk. Organizations that have made steady progress blocking the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure in the Pacific Northwest and fossil fuel transport by rail may soon be facing new expansion proposals.
Despite this, Oregon groups will still forge ahead on climate justice and clean energy solutions at the state and local levels as well as conservation and protection of environmental health. Diverse interests will continue to gather at collaborative tables to tackle a range of ecosystem restoration and management challenges. We and the organizations we have the privilege of supporting understand that the big issues we are tackling are not won or lost during a presidential or congressional term. We take the long view, and we are resolved to move forward.
A key intention behind Meyer’s new Healthy Environment portfolio is to better connect the foundation’s support of a healthy environment with its equity mission. The portfolio’s vision, goals and strategies, which were informed by the hundreds of individuals who participated in the survey and listening sessions we did in 2015, reflect this intention. However, when we launched our new programs last spring we didn’t know how nonprofits would respond or what sorts of proposals we would get.
So what did happen?
First of all, we received a mountain of requests — 160 Healthy Environment inquiry applications requesting over $21.7 million — that aimed to advance the portfolio’s goals. After the inquiry stage, 56 applications moved forward, and we ultimately funded 47.
Based on what you submitted, we can see that you heard us. We said that we wanted to bolster work that simultaneously supports healthy natural systems and the health and vitality of all of Oregon’s diverse communities. Your proposals reflected this.
What did we fund?
If I were to try to summarize what characterizes the work that was most successful in securing funding, I would call it “change work.” As Doug Stamm wrote in his announcement of the new funding approach, “inequity is a pernicious obstacle to the flourishing and equitable state Oregonians deserve.” This means that the status quo isn’t working, so we must direct our energy and our resources toward change — changing hearts and minds, changing how we operate, changing institutions and changing systems. And we must double down on this work now more than ever.
Breaking it down further we saw some clusters of change-focused work that acknowledge this context.
We are pleased to make so many grants that align with the portfolio’s goals for environmental justice and diverse environmental movement goals, both of which sit at the center of the portfolio’s vision. Although there are a relatively small number of organizations in Oregon that define their work as being focused on environmental justice, we made a number of grants that support place-based work to advance environmental justice in both rural and urban communities as well as in state policy. These include efforts that are led by and designed for the benefit of communities of color and other populations experiencing disparities. They are tackling issues such as climate justice, forest workers rights, air toxics reduction and more. In addition, we made several grants to support planning for the integration of environmental priorities into the work of organizations whose missions focus on social justice.
The largest number of applicants requested support for work to advance the portfolio’s triple bottom line goal. We wanted a broad entry point for many organizations doing work for a healthy environment in communities across Oregon, and this goal helps create this doorway. However, we also noted that the highest percentage of applications that were declined fell under this goal area because many projects did not demonstrate a strong connection to our priorities. The most successful applications demonstrated clear environmental, social and economic impact — not based on their organization’s mission or values but based on the outcomes of the proposed work to be funded. Proposals that demonstrated measurable impact in all three areas were most successful.
The first round of portfolio grants also support a range of policy and systems change efforts focusing on water, air and land conservation at the local and state levels. Applicants are using a number of proven approaches — grassroots organizing, coalition building, strategic communications and participating in key policy making committees — to advance policy and systems change for healthy environment improvements. There are examples of organizations trying to take advantage of timely opportunities or a unique context for change and others who are doing the time-consuming, but oh-so-necessary, work of ensuring that newly adopted policy is actually implemented.
To advance change, we must innovate and try new ideas. There are a number of grants that are testing new approaches or scaling up new programs that deliver on the goals of the Healthy Environment portfolio.
We were not surprised to receive a number of applications that requested support for diversity, equity and inclusion training and planning. The environmental field lags behind in equity as compared with many other fields in the nonprofit sector, and there is a clear need for this foundational work to get started.
These are a few of our initial reflections about this first round of grants and the kind of work the new Healthy Environment portfolio was designed to support. We hope that you will check out Meyer’s awards database to gain more insights as you consider future applications. We know that we will learn more as we work with this first set of grantees and support new ones in the future. We welcome your reflections, ideas and questions.
Marcelo Bonta, one of Meyer's three Philanthropy NW Momentum Fellows, knows a lot about the intersection of equity and environmental movements, organizations, funders and advocacy.
If you haven't checked out his latest blog for Philanthropy NW, it's worth your time.
Marcelo doesn't bury his lede:
Environmental philanthropy has a big problem.
It’s not our lack of racial diversity, especially at the executive and trustee level. It’s not the lack of funding directed towards organizations led by people of color. It’s not the lack of funding for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, despite many foundations now talking about it. It’s not the lack of investment in established leaders of color and a professional pipeline for emerging leaders of color. It’s not the underfunding of general support and capacity-building. It’s not the assumption that people of color don’t care about the environment; it’s not the lack of acknowledgement that people of color support environmental issues at higher rates than whites. It’s not the hiring of average white men instead of overqualified people of color.
All those are simply the byproducts of the big problem: White privilege.
When Nils Christoffersen accepted a new job at fledgling nonprofit Wallowa Resources in Enterprise in Oregon’s remote northeastern corner in the summer of 1999, founding director Diane Daggett assigned him a single task: listen.
During his first months, she simply wanted him to go into the community, to better understand local residents and their culture and to learn their fears and dreams. The approach reinforced the most important lesson Christoffersen had learned from years of rural economic development work in southern Africa: You may think you’re well-trained and educated, but people on the ground know more about their place, culture and landscape than you do.
Enterprise, a cattle and farming town set amid prime logging country, was a long shot to remake itself as a hotbed of sustainable economic development. The era of big timber was on its last gasps. All three county sawmills were closed. The days of clear-cutting massive, old trees were long past. One-in-five locals had lost their jobs, and longtime residents were moving away.
After leaving Africa, Christoffersen had been on the hunt for a rural U.S. community that was using sustainability and a commitment to land stewardship to remake itself and assert leadership in ways that he had seen overseas. That’s when he learned about then-Wallowa County Commissioner Ben Boswell’s unusual step of co-founding Wallowa Resources as a nongovernmental economic innovation and experimentation engine. From the ashes of the big timber era, Boswell and his peers envisioned a new restoration-based economy.
Helming a nonprofit situated squarely in the radical-middle could sometimes make Christoffersen the enemy of the two extremes. But Wallowa Resources had a determined board of directors, support from the Wallowa County commission, funding from the USDA’s Rural Development program and an initial strategic plan for the organization. Most important, there was a core group of local stakeholders who believed they could reinvent themselves.
Wallowa Resources launched a large sustainable ecosystem management program, including an effort to manage weeds on 1 million acres of private and public canyonlands that generated $480,000 in payroll and local contracts. A few years later, Wallowa Resources brokered the Arroz Stewardship Contract, a plan for the management of U.S. Forest Service land with buy-in from 20 organizations, resulting in the county’s largest successful commercial timber sale in years. More than a dozen local investors joined Wallowa Resources in their new for-profit subsidiary, Community Smallwood Solutions, to create a small-diameter log processing business.
By 2009, two years after Christoffersen had assumed the executive director role, Wallowa Resources had recruited Integrated Biomass Resources to co-locate with Community Smallwood Solutions to produce chips, hog fuel and pest-free certified firewood. In 2012, Integrated Biomass Resources took over Community Smallwood Solutions and established a 70-acre campus on the site of what was once the county’s largest mill. That same year at the request of Baker, Union and Wallowa counties, Wallowa Resources organized a forest collaborative to advance forest and community resilience across northeast Oregon; the effort serves as a model for federal forest management in Oregon and across the country. Wallowa Resources produced a draft watershed restoration plan for 100,000-acre Lower Joseph Creek in 2014.
Perhaps Wallowa Resources’ greatest accomplishment is its role in helping to evolve the region’s culture toward a new, can-do economy based on sustainability principles. Local cattle ranches have evolved toward grass-fed beef and other niche markets, while large river restoration projects there are seen as national models. Wallowa County even gave the former hospital to Wallowa Resources to become a hub for 13 mission-driven organizations and agencies. Afterschool and summer programs, high school internships, and hands-on work experiences spurred by Wallowa Resources reach nearly half of Wallowa County’s students, giving practical hope to a new generation.
Christoffersen believes the community-benefit approach that worked for Wallowa County can work for other rural regions.
At the heart of Wallowa Resources’ work is organizing: identifying leaders, listening to them and getting out of the way to let leaders lead. Christoffersen seeks authentic connections with people that sustain the natural resource base of the economy in ways that align with the law, local culture, markets, broader public values and ecosystem management best practices.
Seventeen years on, Christoffersen is still listening.
What he hears often: The legacy of past management activity — heavy logging, overgrazing and mismanagement of water, combined with the current drought cycle and declines in federal funding — begs a new social contract between rural communities and urban and suburban populations. We are all, as they say, in it together. But building a complicated mosaic of trust, innovative finance and long-term investments balanced with the practical needs of culture, food, water, environment and jobs will require innovation, commitment and daring.
In towns such as Enterprise, revival can feel tenuous when rural neighbors still struggle. Putting communities back together, and being given the social license to do it, remains the work of one organizer, one weaver, one catalyst and one sustaining organization at a time.
On a sweltering weekend last summer, Rahsaan Muhammad worked the crowd at the annual Peace & Unity Fest in Northeast Portland, stopping neighbors to talk toxics during lulls in the afternoon’s music.
A few miles across town, Mary Ann Warner chatted about the Willamette River’s polluted sediments with members of the Iraqi Society of Oregon during a riverside picnic at Kelley Point Park. She spent the next weekend feeding people experiencing homelessness while discussing the contaminated fish that many people catch and eat from the lower Willamette River.
Meanwhile, Irina Phillips planned a summit for Russian-speaking teens to explore training programs for jobs on the proposed seven-year, $746 million effort to address the cancer-causing soils lining the river from the Broadway Bridge to the Columbia Slough.
All three activists care deeply about the outcome of a federal effort to decontaminate the Portland Harbor Superfund Site, and all hail from communities that, too often, are excluded from discussions about our community’s future.
Through a $40,000 grant from the Meyer Memorial Trust, the trio are working as organizers for the Portland Harbor Community Coalition, a diverse alliance of community groups concerned about the social and environmental justice issues related to the planned cleanup of Portland’s waterway.
Their demands are simple: The coalition seeks a strong, fair plan that entitles those most harmed by the river’s polluted history to an equally outsized benefit from the cleanup.
That means fighting for cleanup standards that make the river’s resident carp, bass and catfish safe for everyone to eat. It means insisting that cleanup contractors hire a diverse, local workforce. It means prodding decision makers to involve people experiencing homelessness, immigrants and people of color in discussions about how the river will function after the health risks are gone.
For these three, the work is deeply personal. These are their stories.
Rahsaan Muhammad
Muhammad, an African-American business owner, activist and artist, proudly describes himself as “a central-city Portlander, all the way.”
But he admits it hasn’t been easy to keep a foothold in the city’s inner reaches. Portland’s black community, once concentrated near the harbor in North and Northeast Portland, has moved outward as those neighborhoods gentrified into predominantly white residential districts.
Muhammad saw a community that once lived, worked and fished along the river — deriving livelihood from the harbor while its toxic legacy threatened their health — at risk of losing out when the time came to address the mess.
He worried cleanup planners would focus their public outreach efforts on communities living close to the harbor and in doing so would fail to reach displaced black Portlanders.
“I can’t tell you how many pounds of carp and catfish all of our families have eaten over the years, not knowing the impacts,” he said. “Rectifying the environment should include rectifying things for the people, too, even if they don’t live here anymore.”
Mary Ann Warner
Warner is the child of Latino migrant farmworkers. For decades after the Delano grape strike of the 1960s, when farmworkers walked off the job to protest their exposure to dangerous pesticides and below-minimum wage earnings, her father refused to purchase grapes.
“‘We’re not eating food that makes the workers sick,’” he told his daughter.
Those early experiences influenced Warner’s work as an advocate for the Latino community.
Latinos are among Portland’s poorest residents, with nearly a quarter living in poverty and two-thirds earning below-average incomes, according to a report by the Coalition of Communities of Color and Portland State University. Language barriers prevent some from accessing information about the risks of eating fish from the Superfund site. Making matters more difficult, Warner said, regulators frequently make token efforts to include Spanish speakers but fall short of truly reaching them.
“You can’t just send out a postcard in Spanish and expect people to come to your public meeting,” she said.
Instead, Warner said, you must go to them. She frequently speaks about the health risks of the Portland Harbor at Latino community events and provides Spanish translation at public meetings about the Superfund site.
Irina Phillips
The issue of river health became personal for Phillips as a graduate student in the mid-1990s, when she experienced a life-threatening allergic reaction after waterskiing in the Baltimore harbor.
A legacy of industrial pollution from the city’s steel industry has tainted the harbor with toxic chemicals, and doctors told Phillips the contamination may have triggered the reaction that swelled her throat and constricted her airways.
“The water looked fine,” said Phillips, who immigrated to Oregon from Russia as a college student in the 1990s. “I just didn’t know there was so much bad stuff in it.”
When Phillips learned about the Willamette’s polluted sediment, she was driven to inform Portland’s Russian-speaking community about the risks. She also sees the cleanup effort as an opportunity to create upward mobility for a Slavic community plagued by poverty.
“There will be jobs available to do the cleanup,” she said, “and the cleanup plan should prioritize training local people do to the work.”
The cottonwoods that tower over McDowell Creek still amaze Richard Bates.
It’s been nearly six years since the Sweet Home-area farmer, desperate to stem the gradual erosion of his land into the creek, worked with the South Santiam Watershed Council to plant saplings along a quarter-mile of its banks.
The planting was a happy marriage of convenience: Council workers saw the project as an opportunity to provide shade for the creek’s threatened steelhead, and Bates found a solution to his disappearing property line.
Now, Bates says, “it’s starting to look like a jungle.” And those eroding banks? “Where things were getting tromped to death by cattle, now they’re being held together by trees.”
Bates couldn’t have known when he agreed to the project that the saplings would also benefit the basin’s economy. But the unique partnership that nourished those trees from seed to forest has provided jobs for dozens of Willamette Valley workers and consistent business for five local, family-owned nurseries.
The partnership is called Contract Grow, and it’s an example of the widespread benefits stemming from an unprecedented push to restore the Willamette River and its tributaries. It’s also a testament to the power of combining restoration dollars with crucial support to help groups do more restoration, more effectively.
Many watershed councils had done restoration on a small scale, working with a handful of property owners at a time. The new investment meant they could partner with hundreds of landowners, with hundreds more interested in joining.
Recognizing that the new capacity could trigger growing pains, Meyer in 2009 began funding a full-time staff position at the Bonneville Environmental Foundation to support watershed councils as they scaled-up their impact.
The groups until then had been buying plants in small quantities: a few bigleaf maples to shade a sliver of riverbank, a few Oregon grape to fill the understory. They purchased potted plants at retail value, about $3 apiece. To a home gardener, that might seem reasonable; for a watershed council buying plants in volume, it was neither affordable nor convenient.
“I was literally calling six different nurseries to get the plants, then stuffing them into my car to get them to the site,” said Sarah Dyrdahl, executive director of the Middle Fork Willamette Watershed Council.
The need for a better system was clear.
Kendra Smith, who had observed the success of a bulk plant-buying contract developed by the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services and then adopted by Clean Water Services in the Tualatin River watershed, saw an opportunity to replicate the model.
Under her leadership, the basin’s conservation groups began combining forces to submit one large, annual order to nurseries contracted to grow plants for their projects. In doing so, they gained control over the type, quantity and quality of species they transplanted.
Pre-ordering also allowed them to specify bare-root plants, which are far more affordable than potted plants. The switch saved millions of dollars in materials alone, while also eliminating the waste and physical strain of transplanting trees from plastic pots. And because the groups placed their order two years in advance, nursery owners gained certainty that the seeds they sowed would be in demand when the time came to harvest.
“It’s one of the things that has allowed our business to achieve a sustainable point,” said George Kral, owner of Scholls Valley Native Plant Nursery in Forest Grove. Today, the Willamette Basin contract has become the nursery’s second-biggest source of business.
But somebody needed to get all those saplings in the ground, and then maintain them while they grew into established trees.
Enter Rosario Franco. The Aumsville resident began his career replanting forestland after logging. But when conservation groups began launching projects that required Franco’s skills, he saw a niche to fill.
“This planting is good for the habitat, the water, the fish,” Franco said. “It’s a good feeling to know your work is doing that.”
In the years since, the basin’s restoration groups, together with area landowners, nurseries and businesses like Franco’s, have planted more than 4,000 acres. They’ve increased the pace of restoration sixfold since 2009.
The surge in business has enabled Franco to pay 33 full-time, year-round workers — a rarity in the seasonal planting industry.
When crews finished planting Bates’ property, the farmer gained a stable riverbank, new fencing to keep his cattle out of the stream and a tranquil campsite for his grandchildren’s frequent visits.
Even fish and wildlife seem pleased with the results: A family of beavers has taken up residence in the newly-wooded waterway. Their dam, built in part with branches from Bates’ trees, traps water in cool, shaded pools that make a perfect haven for steelhead.
