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Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. Being situated among two rivers has made the soil in the Willamette Valley nearly perfect for farming, and our community has a rich history of agriculture. That's been great for feeding Oregonians, but not always great for the environment. Converting natural land into farms meant scraping the landscape of native trees and plants and harming countless animals and birds. Today on the show, you'll hear how conservationists have been slowly returning nature to its original settings.
One key natural laboratory is Green Island, a preserve purchased by the McKenzie River Trust that has been reclaimed from its farming past and is slowly being returned to its original wild splendor. Carved out by the McKenzie River, this large island is now a true oasis for fish, birds, plants and trees. Today we bring you a conversation with two of the trust's leaders from the grounds of Green Island, where river otters often play. We talk with Joe Moll, executive director of the McKenzie River Trust, and Holly McRae, its outreach manager. First, McRae tells us how Green Island came to be.
Holly McRae: Green Island is one of McKenzie River Trust's conservation properties, located at the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers. It's about 1,100 acres, and McKenzie River Trust acquired it in 2003. The Green family operated a farm here for about three generations. Nobody ever actually lived on Green Island, but the Green family farmed all different types of crops here and also kept livestock. They employed a lot of Coburg residents who came out to work in the summertime.
When the family reached a point where they were considering selling the property, Karen Green worked with McKenzie River Trust to sell it. Over the years, she had become very appreciative of the fish and wildlife here. The family would come out and camp during the summertime, and she loved the property so much that she wanted to see it protected for those values in perpetuity. So in working with McKenzie River Trust, she sold the property.
When the trust took over, a lot of the land had been in agriculture, with the intent to turn it back into a floodplain forest. Over a million trees and shrubs have been planted over the last 20 years, and 5,600 feet of levees have been removed. Every year, MRT staff and volunteers carry out stewardship work: removing blackberries, planting trees and willows, and even monitoring birds. Volunteers are really an important part of our current stewardship of this property.
Dunne: So, Joe, tell listeners why Green Island is important, why it was important for McKenzie River Trust to acquire this property, and what it means from both an ecological and a community-building perspective.
Joe Moll: After the 1964 flood, and then again the 1996 flood, there was a recognition that even with the dams upriver, these rivers are very much alive. They shift their channels year to year, season to season, and this confluence of the McKenzie and the Willamette was highlighted as an area rich in biodiversity. So the initial acquisition was really with an eye toward fish and wildlife habitat.
Over time, as McKenzie River Trust and our partners have stewarded this place, we've also brought in a lot of people who have developed their own love for it. And it's at a time when, let's face it, people are pulled out of the natural world more easily than they're pulled into it. So through Second Saturday open days, events and tours, we've been able to give people the opportunity to reengage with nature and rediscover that joy they experienced as kids.
Do you remember what it was like, Michael, to be out as a kid just exploring, even on a small piece of land near where you grew up? Now imagine having 1,000 acres or so to roam and learn on, land that for most of the time is set aside so wildlife that's been hit hard over the last century can thrive. It's that mix: protecting areas for the natural world itself, and giving people places to come and love and engage with it.
Dunne: Holly, how do you take an island that was converted for agriculture and restore it to its natural beauty?
McRae: It's not easy, and I'd say it's a work in progress. When McKenzie River Trust purchased this property, it was the largest-scale restoration project of its kind, so even deciding where and what to plant was something of an experiment. You can almost think of Green Island as a living landscape laboratory, where we're learning what's working and what's not, especially in a changing climate. A dozen different tree species were planted across the island, and over time we've seen what works well and what doesn't, even down to whether or not to water the trees.
In the first planting, irrigation wasn't used, and the success rate wasn't very high. So we adapted: we installed irrigation lines on Green Island and changed our tactics, planting in rows so we could mow between them. We let those trees and shrubs get established and watered them. Now we're at a point where all those irrigation lines have been pulled, and everything we planted is either free to grow and live or to die. Over time, we'll see what makes it and what doesn't, and it's already starting to look like a more natural landscape.
Dunne: Joe, the river is going to do what it wants to do. How do you work with the river at different times? It can obviously be very low, but it can also flood and change things. How do you work with what might be an unwilling partner?
Moll: I can't tell you how many times we've choked on humble pie out here. Right where we're standing, we did some initial work to clear out weeds, and we felt very good about it. Then the next winter, the river came through and blew everything out.
We've really had to try to understand the history of the river, and partners at the University of Oregon and Oregon State University have helped us see that we tend to think of the river, especially in summer, as a single-threaded channel. Yet for millennia it has moved back and forth, east and west, across this floodplain. So we're trying to learn from that active floodplain and secure enough land that if we lose some because the river picks it up and redistributes it downstream, we can celebrate that. That's a difficult thing to do, whether you're in a city or in a production agricultural area. It means recognizing that the goal here isn't to preserve a place itself so much as the dynamics: giving the river a place to move, run and change, and being OK with that.
Right behind us, you can see an area where, in 2006 and 2007, the river made a big shift from the west and went straight to the north. Now you have 30-foot-tall cottonwoods and willows that came in naturally. The system is resetting itself. It's a place where the flora and fauna can play out as they evolved to, and we really have to step back from thinking we can control too much. We're going to make some assumptions, and some will work out and some won't. The one constant, of course, is change.
Dunne: Holly, I'm wondering, in the years that McKenzie River Trust has managed this area, how has the larger environment, climate change and so on, impacted what we have here on Green Island?
McRae: That's a tricky one to answer directly. One tree species I think is interesting to look at is oak. There's a part of Green Island where Oregon white oak was planted, and it's just not doing very well. It's hard to say whether that's because of climate change or not, but we do know some tree species are better adapted to a warming climate than others. I think it's too early in these plantings to directly correlate that.
Seasonal flooding certainly is something we see out here, along with bigger storms. Historically, those would have happened anyway, but we have dam control upriver that mitigates the impact of that flooding. Still, we do see high-water events where the river hops its banks, comes over and floods much of Green Island. Green Island can hold that water, store it and slowly release it, so it acts as a buffer for some of those climate change impacts, like big floods.
Dunne: Joe, a lot of people are familiar with the McKenzie, maybe from driving, biking or walking by it. If they were here with us now, what would they see on Green Island that might be different from what they're used to seeing along the McKenzie and the Willamette?
Moll: With so much dynamism and change in the channels year to year, you see a lot of gradation in the plants here. You've got open gravel bars and maybe some newly established low shrubs, and right behind that, willows established five years ago and cottonwoods established 10 years ago. And despite being farmed for about 100 years, Green Island was never really leveled. So you'll see the history: You might walk across what looks like a flat plain but is actually the remnant of an old channel that's 10 feet below where you were walking before. It's that diversity of place.
If visitors were adventurous enough to step into the river itself, they'd feel things that are different from other parts of the basin, with these same channel movements at work. Temperature is something these rivers have become increasingly stressed by, and there are wonderful places on Green Island that demonstrate what happens when you have a connected floodplain with so many channels: Water goes subsurface into what's called the hyporheic zone, and when it emerges again, it's much colder, sometimes 20 degrees colder, like springs within the river. For fish, salmon and trout, those cold-water upwellings are critical. When you're walking in the river and you hit one, it's beautiful. It's a shock to the system, but it also makes you recognize how much warmer the Willamette River is getting and how much of a stressor that is. That's something we're going to have to work with and deal with for the next century as climate change continues.
Dunne: Holly, as you've walked around and gotten to know this place, were you surprised at how resilient an environment like this can be? It was obviously a very different place decades ago than it is now. Have you been surprised at how resilient nature can be in coming back to something like its original shape and form?
McRae: What's actually more surprising to me is how quickly it changes. I've been working out here for a little over 10 years now, and I remember coming out here with my daughter when these trees were no more than 3 or 4 feet tall. Now you're looking at 10- and 15-foot trees. So nature can change quickly. I think “returning” is an interesting word, because this will certainly never be exactly what it was prior to farming. It will become something else, it's always becoming something else. That's kind of the magic of Green Island: In order to stay the same, it has to constantly change. That's what we see out here.
Dunne: Joe, talk about some of the flora and fauna here that, because the land is protected, folks might not normally see outside Green Island. What might they see here that's a bit different?
Moll: Most of us are typically looking at the birds that come to our feeders, and birds that thrive in urban environments are generalists. They're the ones that adapt to having people around and to a lot of disturbance, noise and so on. The diversity of birds out here is genuinely shocking to the senses, just the beauty of the color and sound.
You also see more sign: There's a lot of scat around, and you occasionally find the remains of a bird or another animal killed by a predator. I don't know that we're attracting anything new here, but with that much less human disturbance on a regular basis, you get greater densities. And as we talked about before, those gradations of habitat mean different areas for different life stages, sometimes even of the same birds and animals. When they have a greater range of places to live, you see a greater diversity of response, not unlike humans in our own urban cultures, where rich cultures emerge when there are all sorts of niches for people to fill and explore.
Dunne: Holly, what are McKenzie River Trust's goals for Green Island in the near future, say the next three to five years? What do you hope to see continue?
McRae: One of the things we're working on right now is looking at the landscape and thinking about how best to utilize volunteers on the land, where they can really play an active role in helping us steward these lands. We're also looking at our capacity for engaging people who want to come out here. It's amazing to see the interest in our Living River Exploration Days, as well as the tours we offer throughout the year. Those fill up instantly, and there are waiting lists. People really want the opportunity to get out here and explore.
So, as Joe mentioned, it's about balancing the desire of people to come out here and explore with the needs of the wildlife: timing those visits seasonally around nesting activity and other factors, while still making sure we can provide access, because people really value these lands. From an ecological standpoint, we're at a point where it's fascinating to watch what's going to survive and what's not, and there are always opportunities to look at planting more natives out here. The swales we dug in the south to connect channels are ones we continue to plant. And then there's a lot of monitoring of the species to see what's out here and how they're doing.
Dunne: I apologize if this is an unfair question, but what's your favorite location here on Green Island?
McRae: I was just telling Joe, actually, that we're standing at it right now. This spot we're looking at, with this side channel, I've had the pleasure of watching otter, mink and beaver here. I've seen a ton of wildlife from this spot. It's also a really good spot to look for signs of wildlife. As I mentioned, this is an active otter latrine for much of the year, so it's a good place to bring people on tours. On open days, you'll also find these rocks covered with people doing plein air painting, birding, playing guitar or just sitting by the river.
You asked Joe earlier what's unique about this place. One thing I think is unique is that you can get to the edge of the river here and not hear a road or a parking lot behind you. This is one of the few places where you can just be on the river and not hear any sounds other than natural ones.
Dunne: Joe, how healthy is the McKenzie River today?
Moll: That's a really good, complicated question. I think that in this part of Oregon, we have some of the cleanest drinking water around. The trends are not great, though. The McKenzie itself, emerging from groundwater, starts out really well, but the cumulative effect of our love for the river is that we like to be close to it. We've built our roads close to rivers, and people continue to build right on the edges of rivers. I understand the draw, we all love being next to rivers, but it's hard for us to see the cumulative effects of having vehicles, roads and houses close to the water. So you're starting to see the McKenzie show signs of higher temperatures and greater contaminant loads.
By comparison, we're still far above so many rivers, not only in western Oregon but around the world. The health of the McKenzie, and even the Willamette, is pretty good. I think there was a study back in the mid-2020s that gave the Willamette overall a B-plus in terms of species richness, water quality, temperature and those sorts of things. But it's the trends we have to watch. With increased temperatures, the wild swings in weather we're experiencing, and the shifting balance between native and non-native competitive species, all of that adds up to a lot of questions.
I think the best thing we can do, not just by coming to places like Green Island but by taking that mindset back home, is to think about where we need to be close to the river and where we can really back away and give it more of a buffer. That buffer is really an investment in the long-term health of the river.
Dunne: Holly, last question to you: For folks who want to come out here, how do they do it?
McRae: You can go to our website, mckenzieriver.org, where we have an events calendar that shows all the opportunities we offer, both on Green Island and our other lands. Our Living River Exploration Days are open to the public; that's when we open Green Island on the second Saturday of the month, March through December. We also offer volunteer opportunities on the land here at Green Island, which are also on our calendar. We try to provide lots of ways for people to engage with the land and learn more about McKenzie River Trust and our conservation efforts here.
Dunne: Holly McRae and Joe Moll, thank you both so much for bringing me out here to Green Island. I really appreciate it.
McRae and Moll: It's our pleasure. Thank you so much. Glad we could do it, Michael.
Dunne: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon on the Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org.
Before we go, I wanted to talk briefly about our show yesterday, where we interviewed the former student body president from the University of Oregon. We talked about her controversial commencement speech, in which she voiced support for Palestine and included an expletive directed at ICE. That student was later admonished by a member of the board of trustees during a conference call. After the speech aired, we received many comments about the show, some positive and some negative. Some listeners supported her right to speak truth to power; others thought she was being insensitive to her audience.
One point I want to make perfectly clear: Several listeners expressed disappointment that a member of the board of trustees wasn't part of the show. As I explained yesterday, and will explain again now, we did reach out to the trustees, and they declined to make anyone available. As always, we truly appreciate your comments, both positive and negative.
Tomorrow on the show, I recently got a chance to ride along with a Eugene police patrol officer during a busy Friday night and experienced the good, the bad and the truly bizarre of a typical night for Eugene police. We arrested subjects and brought them to jail, and it was a very eye-opening experience. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon on the Record. Thanks for listening.
