Narrator: Mike Houck, Audubon Society, Urban Naturalist Program
Interviewer: Donna Sinclair
Date: January 13, 2,000
Place: Portland OR
S: So, if you could just start by stating your name, date of birth, place of birth, a little background information.
H: Well, my name is Mike Houck, Michael C., but I go by Mike. I was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1947. Moved all over the United States. Moved back here from Philadelphia for high school in ’61, Estacada, Union High School. Went to under undergraduate school at Iowa State University in zoology, came back here, went to grad school at Portland State University, and uh, masters in science and teaching in biology, Dick Forbes was my major prof. Following that went to work for OMSI for five years as director of their community research center, working with high school students on science projects, their own research. I taught for two years at Oregon Episcopal School, after that in ’79, ’80, I came to Audubon Society in Portland, although I’d been involved since ’70, on the board. And started working on a project, I called it “Wild in the City: What’s in Your Own Backyard” and did a tag program of Portland Public Schools. That kind of morphed into, in 1982 got a five thousand dollar grant from Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife non-game program to start conducting fish and wildlife habitat inventories as part of the Oregon Land Use Planning process. It’s a land-use planning requirement to a do inventories and then come up with some program to protect or . . . unfortunately in most cases not to protect natural resources in the individual jurisdictions. And that led me after, let see ’82 to ’88 and ’88, and of course all during that period from ’82 to ’88, one of the first places I started focussing was the Columbia Slough. In fact one of my great surprises was when I did a slide program in North Portland, for the neighborhood associations regarding reports of urban natural resources – I had quite a bit of trepidation because I figured I would be laughed out of the room in a blue collar, working class community. Why is Audubon here talking to us about nature when we care about jobs . . . The amazing thing was I got a warmer response in North Portland than in anywhere else in the region. People really care about the slough in their community. Partially, I think because they feel, rightly so, they’ve been really dumped on in North Portland in respect to land fills and all kinds of other negative environmental impacts, and because there actually is a genuine interest in natural resources in North Portland. At any rate, in ’88 I concluded that we’d gotten very little by way of protection of natural resources through the planning process, the local planning process. And so, I wrote a grant to Memorial Trust, got a hundred and sixteen thousand dollars to propose a metropolitan wildlife refuge system for the Portland-Vancouver region. And actually Debra Howe, in urban planning at PSU has written a paper on this. So that may be a resource you want to check into, and I’ve got a couple other papers, one in the American Journal of Planning, and this one other one, so if you want to follow up on that I can give those to you. Because it describes the whole evolutionary process, from ’82 to present. What I proposed was to establish a regional wildlife refuge and natural area system and identify an agency to carry that out. And got together with citizens like Barbara Walker, with the 40-mile loop land trust, and others to promote this idea at Metro. So that’s when we started working with Metro, and created the green spaces program.
S: In ’88?
H: ’88. Between ’88 and ’92 we created the green spaces master plan. And, of course, in ’95 passed a bond measure to go out and start buying land, green spaces, natural areas. Well, cutting through, and of course we were successful in ’95, passing that. Since then, all my work has focused primarily on Metro, on the regional growth management strategies. And basically coming full circle back to where I was in ’82, which is conducting the goal five for fish and wildlife habitat inventories. Now we’re doing that at the regional level. Well, cutting across all of those efforts, all of that time, seventeen years now, eighteen years, the Columbia Slough has continually been a very important component of those efforts. . . So, the slough, both because it is such an incredible urban green space resource, and of course it’s a huge component of the 40-mile Loop, so were talking about natural resource values as well as passive recreation, bicycling, canoeing, kayaking, all that sort of stuff. [It ] has always figured very prominently in my thinking about the role of green spaces in the urban area. And particularly because it is such a degraded system that people have tended to write it off over the years. Fortunately, that attitude has changed dramatically. I mean it wasn’t that many years ago . . .that people were seriously advocating that it just be put in a pipe and gotten rid of, it’s really in the way of orderly urban development, should be done away with because it is so dirty anyway. That’s been a huge, that’s been massive amounts of my time doing field trips and writing things like the Urban Naturalist publication on the Slough, and more recently the Urban Stream brochure to combat that image of the slough. That it’s best gotten rid of.
S: How do you think that the community workers that you talked to view the slough? You said that you went in and spoke to people about Audubon and natural habitat and that you had a warm reception. Could you be a little more specific about what kind of reception that you had?
H: Well, I was asked by the North Portland neighborhood coalition, it has probably morphed into something else by now I suppose, but a neighborhood group in North Portland to discuss the idea that I had about the refuge system and then talk with them about how the Slough might fit into that. You know it was a pretty diverse group, so I can’t say that everybody in the room shared equally in their enthusiasm, but there certainly was a hard-core group of individuals who had been involved in issues on Smith and Bybee Lakes and the landfill on the Columbia Slough for years and years. So they saw, I think they saw in me a kind of a light from the environmental community, that I shared their concerns and interests which they weren’t used to hearing, I think. Because generally speaking, there wasn’t much going on with respect to environmental protection on the Slough, at that point in time. That’s changed dramatically. Then, of course, we’ve interacted a lot with the Wilkes neighborhood folks out to the east, Alice Blatt and that crew. If you haven’t talked to Alice, you certainly need too, she’s one of the most active people – especially on the upper Slough. Alice and Helen Sherman Kohen and that crew. . .
H: Alice Blatt. Oh yeah, she’s key. And then way to the east on Fairview Lake, Jane Graybill and those folks too. So, up and down the Slough there are individuals and groups of people that have put a huge amount of their time and energy as well into trying to protect what’s out there. And, of course, one of the big challenges now is how to actually go about restoring both the water quality and the habitat along the Slough.
S: What do you see as the most critical issues in the Slough?
H: Well, it would be hard to understate the importance of addressing the toxic sediments, which there are, and water quality. That’s certainly huge. But I come at it from more of a habitat perspective. Frankly, I’m not sure the Slough will ever get to the fishable, swimmable category. I mean that’s a goal I think we should be striving for, but I would like to see resources also put into restoring habitat along that linear green space. So I think the biggest challenge is how you go about retrofitting and rectifying what I’ve always considered to be absolutely inappropriate development on the Slough. I mean when I first got involved in ’82, Multnomah County had their significant environmental concern overlay and it was still allowing parking lots to go right up to the edge of the Slough. And the City of Portland’s planning process didn’t do a whole lot better, I think, in the interim. The challenge is how do you accommodate transitioning from farmlands to very intense, commercial development, and retain. . . enhance or restore the natural attributes of the Slough? That’s tough. But I know BES has already just spent ten million bucks, just in the last few years on that issue.
S: How have you been involved in that?
H: Well, actually, interestingly as I’ve gotten sucked off into the regional work, my direct involvement has become less and less. Over the last two years I’ve been involved primarily by leading field trips and continuing that involvement and Peter Tenow – again if you haven’t talked to Peter you should definitely have a chat with him. Peter lives in North Portland, and offered to represent us on the watershed council. I was involved at the beginning of the creation of the watershed council and stuck it out for five years or so, through the very painful, arduous process of getting the thing come to fruition, including dealing with lots of egos and very strong personalities, and it was very tumultuous, but we finally did manage to pull together, I think, a very actively involved and diverse group of people to address the issues we are talking about. So the last couple of years, I’ve stepped back out of that role. Because I already, I felt, contributed as much as I could to the process and Peter lives in North Portland anyway, and who better to represent us on the council than somebody from the neighborhood. So he agreed to do that. For the last two years I’ve actually kind of backed off my involvement in the Slough. ’82 to ’97 I was pretty intensely involved in the last couple of years. Shifting priorities. Because there are other things going on out there.
S: What part of Portland did you grow up in?
H: Oh, let’s see. Kindergarten years Northeast, off 82nd. First grade, Collins View School near Lewis and Clark. Sixth grade, say fourth, fifth, sixth, somewhere in that area, outer Southeast on Johnson Creek, SE 77nd Place. Lived with some very interesting people who were kind of relatives, but not exactly. So I kind of bounced around from family to family to family, actually in those years. And then eventually hooked up with my mother and my new stepfather, and he was in the navy, so we moved to Long Beach, San Clemente, San Pedro, Bremerton, Philadelphia, Pensacola, all over the country. And, happily, moved back here from Philadelphia in ’61 to Estacada. So I spent my high school years in Estacada. And then wound up, I’ve been in Northwest Portland with a few hiatuses to Southwest, since ’69. I’ve actually been in this fourplex since ’79, I bought into it with friends from Audubon in ’79. So I’ve been here more or less nonstop for twenty-one years.
S: Time flies.
H: Yes it does.
S: I was going to ask you what your first introduction to the Slough was, if you remember that.
H: Oh wow. My first Slough experience.
S: Your first Slough experience.
H: Man. I believe I went out with Susan Chandler, who was staff to the North Portland neighborhood association. I believe we went out to Smith and Bybee Lakes and Kelley Point and I honestly don’t remember my first, Oh, yes I do. One of my first canoe experiences with the Bureau of Environmental services on Smith and Bybee Lakes, looking at the landfill closure as I recall. I don’t remember my first trip on the Slough itself, honestly.
S: It wasn’t really until the ��80s that you really had a slough experience?
H: Right, exactly.
S: You were aware of it before then, aware of the Slough?
H: Not before ’82. Because ’82 is when I started the urban naturalist program and took on the mantle of urban naturalist at Audubon, and then I started looking around, of course, the region to see what’s out there. I don’t know how I made contact with, but that first thing I think was the first experience with Susan. I think she got some folks together, maybe Mikey Jones was on the trip I’m not sure I remember. And we took a look at Smith and Bybee in the Slough. So that would have been in ’82, ’83, somewhere in there.
S: So did you get involved with the Smith and Bybee Lakes, Friends of Smith and Bybee Lakes?
H: Oh yeah. Well see there was no Friends of Smith and Bybee Lakes at that time. I got involved in at least two, and maybe three, but for sure two planning processes. Lengthy two, three year planning processes to determine what should occur on Smith and Bybee Lakes. Of course, years ago there was a massive plan to have hotels and boat ramps and, you know, hydroplanes and you name it. Was a plan. It was intense. And then, after a couple aborted attempts to come up with a management plan, got involved with one that the Port of Portland was kind of spearheaded. And that’s when actually the parking lot got put out there. I was, I told – Oh that’s in the publication I did, North Portland Naturally, I forgot about that.
S: Do you have a copy of it?
H: At Audubon, yeah, I don’t have it on me. I told Brian Campbell, I remember the meeting, if he would work with the Port – he worked at the Port – to put in a parking lot and access point at Smith and Bybee Lakes, I’d write a brochure. I would produce a brochure, which we did. I think this parking lot cost a little more than my brochure to produce. But that was really the first real access that was available then. I mean you could get into Smith and Bybee Lakes, but it was on deeply rutted, miserable to walk on, wet, muddy, uneven, ORV trails that went between Smith and Bybee Lakes from where the parking lot is now. It was a mess. Garbage was being dumped. In fact, I remember vividly on Christmas count – every year Audubon has a Christmas count throughout the region but also for the City of Portland – I remember walking between hunters and their decoys out at Smith and Bybee Lakes. And partially because we were trying to create a passive recreation wildlife area, not a hunting area. My philosophy at that time was hey, they’ve got Sauvie Island. Let them go to Sauvie Island where the hunters have reign on Sauvie Island, we can’t go out there during the winter. So Smith and Bybee should be available to North Portland residents and other folks who want to experience nature without shotguns going off around. So it was kind of interesting. So there was an era there where access was very problematic and nobody knew where it was. There’s always a trade off there of course, but we got the trail, the parking lot first and then the trail got put in. The brochure I produced, North Portland Naturally. And then ��.
S: So that kind of saved it from development ��
H: Well, no, the development. Being saved from development actually came from citizens from North Portland who got together with I think Mike Burton, who’s now a Metro executive. Mike Burton was a state legislator at the time. My recollection is, he introduced legislation that was unique in the state in that it addressed a specific wetland area, Smith and Bybee Lakes, and said under no circumstances will anymore fill occur in Smith and Bybee Lakes, period. That was passed by the state legislature. So it was a grassroots action on the part of citizens probably, folks like Mikey Jones and others, that persuaded Burton to take that action. . . But of course, that did not resolve what would happen with the land around the Slough. So that’s been the last ten or twelve year effort, is how much development and what kind of development and how will storm water be dealt with, and what about the recreational trails and what about getting the 40-mile Loop trail in, that is still not in. Those sorts of issues have been at the fore the last ten or twelve years. Not a question. The lakes were not going to be filled due to that legislation, but that didn’t say anything about how they were going to be managed. That’s been a big issue. Management of the Lakes and the land around them.
S: What do you know about River Gate, Industrial park?
H: Well, you know the fact that it’s all been filled and formerly, I call it the great ? desert.
S: Have you watched that happen for the last ten years?
H: Oh yeah, yeah. Well a little historical footnote, by the way, you might – I would urge you to look into this. I’ve never gotten the total story on this I don’t think. Mikey Jones, people like that I think have a longer understanding of the history. My understanding was the Biddle estate donated that entire area – oh, I’ve got someone else for you to talk to by the way, two people. The Biddle estate was donated to Willamette University, with the condition I was told, that nothing would be done with it as far any kind of development for 50 years. The Port of Portland, allegedly, working with Senator Hatfield, who is an alum of course of Willamette, somehow got the will changed. And the Port, my recollection is, bought the entire area from Willamette University for like a million dollars or something. So, unbelievably a small amount of money when you think about what’s occurred out there since. I think that would be a fascinating aspect of the history of the Slough and Smith and Bybee.
S: Is that part of the Slough, the lower Slough, where Smith and Bybee are?
H: Yeah, right. The two other people you may want to talk with, one in particular, but maybe both of them, Dave Marshall and Tom McCallister. Tom wrote for the Journal and then the Oregonian. And they used to go bird watching at Smith and Bybee as kids, like 60, 70 years ago. In fact they wrote a chapter, an essay, in the book we are doing, “Wild in the City.” That we are doing with the Oregon Historical Society. This year it’s coming out.
S: Is it possible to get a copy of the chapter on the Slough just for informational purposes?
H: Well there isn’t. Oh, you mean what I’ve written up on the Slough? I suppose as long as it wasn’t used. If you just use if for background. Don’t print it or anything, right. That would be fine. So they used to go up there as kids when it was still farmland, so I think that would be a very useful perspective to bring into your work. And they literally go back, I don’t know, 50-60 years. When they used to go birding in the farmland on the East flanks of Mt. Tabor, to give you an idea. So yeah, I observed? Of course all the filling and changes out there. Including recreating some of the wetlands at Ramsey Lake for the water quality in the storm water treatment.
S: Were you involved in that process at all?
H: Yeah, yeah. Years ago in terms of encouraging it and then, as with other things, I’ve had to move on. Once something got underway, then I had to get out of there and start working on some, the next thing. So that’s kind of the story with my involvement with the Slough. I try to be a catalyst to the extent that I can. And a lot of that has been leading the trips and writing stuff up to convince people that it’s worth protecting and restoring. That’s why there’s a whole new cast of players in there now that I don’t even know a lot of them.
S: In the watershed council ��
H: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know the key people in my mind, from my perspective were Troy Clark, and Peter, and of course, Jane. Susan Barthel, folks like that. . . . Peter’s pretty key, I think. He’s a character you’ll enjoy. . .
S: Great, great. I may send you an email after I transcribe this asking for phone numbers.
H: Alright. So you’re talking to somebody who is kind of, you know, on his way out in some respects. Because of all these other regional things ��
S: Can you talk a little about the Metro green spaces program? And how that came about?
H: Again, I’ve got some references that would help flush that out. Well, as I said earlier, it was clear to me in ’88 that we weren’t getting sufficient protection of areas like the Slough. So, through the regulatory land use program. So, I said, gosh, [yawns] we need other tools including acquisition. I mean that wasn’t the only focus but it was the key one, trying to raise money to go buy some areas to protect them, even knowing there’ll never be enough money. So, Metro, we had militated for Metro to undertake a regional park inventory through the, it was the Willamette Futures, Columbia-Willamette Futures Forum, probably in ’83,’84, ’85. In that era, when Mike Lindberg was commissioner of parks, again Barbara Walker and a bunch of green/park advocates were wanting to take a look at parks from a regional perspective because there were all kinds of funding inequities when you consider, Multnomah County had Oxbow County Park and people were coming from Washington County and Clark County, all over the region to use the park and yet they weren’t contributing to its management. So there was an interest in trying to see if there could be some kind of regional approach to managing these areas. And that, Metro did an inventory and they had a great computer database of all the soccer fields or tennis courts, and you know, where are the lighted tennis courts with bathrooms and that kind of stuff. And basically I said, “Look, we don’t need, that’s not what we need from Metro. That’s a minor thing. What we need from Metro is an entity that has the authority and can establish the vision to look at natural resources across political lines, across jurisdictional boundaries. And no agency was doing that, and so I went and did a slide show, the refuge system concept, and Barbara Walker of the Forty Mile Loop Land Trust was there, and oh, David Yamashita from Portland Parks and Jim Sjelin from Portland Parks and Metro counselors of the time, Sharon Kelly who’s now with the Multnomah County Commission, and Richard Devlin whose a state legislator – were all there and they – and Lynn Sharp who did the original inventory work. And she had produced this really funky natural area map from old, ten, fifteen year-old aerial photography. She did the best she could given what was available. And importantly, there had been an informal gathering at PSU. Joe Poroski, Dr. Joe Poroski, in geography. He and I got together and we decided to put on a seminar on urban natural resources, which went on for a year or two. And then Joe became actively involved in the green spaces movement as well, and then eventually actually did contract work, because we realized we really didn’t know what was out there on the ground. So we, the royal we, contracted with them. I put $20,000 from Audubon up, to cover the cost of this, and fortunately didn’t have to actually cut the check because we raised the $20,000 from a variety of parties. But anyway, guaranteed that Bergman Photographic Services would fly the entire region, including Clark County, with color infrared photography, low altitude. This was May of ’88 and ’89, and Joe then, had a graduate student, Paul Newman, who digitized all that information. Put it into a geographic information system which then went to Metro, which showed where all the remaining green spaces in the region were. So that was the first time that we had a true indication of what was left on the ground with respect to natural areas. Very important.
[End Side A, Begin Side B]H: People actually got, even though they tend to be parochial in that they care about their neighborhood or green space, near them or in their back yard, there are people who are broadminded enough that they also understand there’s a bigger system out there, that it’s all connected. So that was critical, getting that map up for people to see.
S: So what did the map look like? Can you describe it? What the results were, and how the Slough fits into that?
H: The most outstanding feature of that map, and a major element of Metro’s 20-40 Growth Management Plan is the networks of green, and the Slough is one of those networks of green. Fanno (?) Creek, Johnson Creek, Bronson Rock, Willow Creek, and the Tualatin Basin, Tualatin River, Salmon Creek greenway in Clark County. And the Slough is a very narrow ribbon of green from Fairview Lake to the Willamette, but you can see it. And so you can imagine then that there is wildlife there, and there’s this wonderful corridor that could be made better through time. That map allowed you to kind of visualize that and then maybe visualize what could be added to it. And then of course the first thing we realized was that 92 plus percent of all that green is privately owned. So, as development and growth occurs it’s all in jeopardy. So the approach of the greenspaces program was to start buying it. The interesting twist on that, and I actually support this, but I think it’s time we revisit the issue, is that an awful lot of the money has gone to large chunks of land at the urban edge, and there are areas like the slough that have received less attention from the acquisitions perspective.
Interestingly, the Slough played a pretty prominent role in Olmsted’s park board recommendations in 1903. You know he advocated for a large watery park in the Columbia Slough region, which basically, functionally became Smith & Bybee Lakes. They envisioned it, they had it on their map where the Portland Airport is right now.
S: Oh, is that right? So it’s part of the originally proposed forty-mile loop. The Slough was the important waterway.
H: Right. . . you can get a copy of the report from the Park Bureau. It’s a little blue booklet and they have it available at the reception desk, and it’s $4.00.
S: What groups do you think have been most affected by recent policies on the Slough?
H: Well, that’s kind of an interesting question because they haven’t been affected enough in my opinion. Obviously, getting some additional protection in terms of riparian area along the slough, and wetlands, have affected the development community, but as I say, not nearly as much as it should. If you go the Upper Slough and look at Winmar, look at the new development out at 185th, I was shocked at how close that was located to the slough, and how much filling went in. . . I guess we’ve all been affected by those policies, some negatively and some positively. I think that the most positive thing that’s occurred is all the effort that’s gone in by the Bureau of Environmental Services on trying to re-create some wetlands out there and restore the forest. And I’d say the formation of the watershed council has been very positive as well. And I think that the regulatory environment created an incentive for folks to get together and try to figure out ways to solve some of the problems. So I think that’s been very positive for everybody in that case.
S: . . . grassroots activity because of the policies.
H: Well, and including the business community and environmental community and neighborhoods. I’m a big believer in watershed councils, but I think they’ve been excessively oversold as change agents. Because by their very nature, if they actually have all the stakeholders at the table, they’re not going to move terribly aggressively in any particular direction probably. But, that said, I think the Slough watershed council really has provided a good forum to get issues out and get them discussed and people look one another in the eye and it’s been helping.
S: Do you find that most of the stakeholders are actually involved?
H: Yeah. . . I think it’s still pretty healthy in that regard.
S: One of the things that I’m curious about, and I don’t know if you’ve seen this, is the subsistence fishing that still goes on in the Slough. Have you seen people fishing?
H: Oh yeah. Not a lot, but yeah, on occasion. I know Don Francis spent a lot of time on that particular issue, trying to get signs put up, and the city finally put up multi-language signs.
S: So, Don Francis was involved in that. He is from Riverwatch, right?
H: Well, he just quit. He was with Willamette Riverkeeper. And he just resigned a couple weeks ago. . .
S: I wanted to ask you what you thought was the biggest obstacle to working in Slough politics?
H: Well, the incredible power of the Port. I mean the port has been, I think irresponsible over the years, frankly. There have been some happy exceptions to that, like the creation of the Smith & Bybee Lakes plan and you know, there are individuals who work for the port who have been pretty conscientious, in particular ones who are now on the council. But as an entity, as an institution, I think it’s been pretty detrimental to the Slough, over the years. Just the nature, the manner in which Rivergate was filled and developed, did not show a hell of a lot of regard for the slough as a natural resource. And including all that riparian land that was supposed to be protected 150 feet back in the Kelly Point area. It’s still a sore point for me, and it’s still not been rectified. So the port’s intransigence, I guess.
S: Do you see that continuing?
H: Yeah, unhappily. Although, as I said, the folks who are now on the council I think are good-intentioned and sincere people. But you know sometimes you can have great people and the institution is still moving in the wrong direction. I haven’t seen any massive turnabout, change of attitude myself.
S: What happened with Kelly Point Park? I’m not familiar with that.
H: I was referring to the, yeah they were required to keep 150 feet back from the Slough when they filled it, along the slough, not at Kelly Point, but upstream a bit. Just across the bridge. Between the bridge and the landfill, and they nuked it. I mean there’s, you know there are trees down along the slough itself and they protected nothing to speak of, a very thin strip. You know, they’re arrogant. They didn’t feel they had to comply with that. And they haven’t done anything to rectify it, although they continually talk about rectifying it. So, they’ve been probably the bad actor. But there’s plenty of blame to go around. All you have to do is go walk or ride, or drive up and down the slough. It’s pretty obvious, everybody’s hammered it. That’s probably the single biggest problem is, land-use has not respected the slough. Just as it hasn’t respected Fanno Creek and Johnson Creek, and it’s changing now.
S: So do you think that the struggle is still as strong?
H: Oh, absolutely. Talk to Troy, talk to Peter.
S: I have talked to Troy.
H: I can’t imagine he’s totally sanguine about what’s going on out there. I would imagine he’s probably pretty. Fortunately, he’s still very high energy and it totally committed. Without people like that, the Slough would be written off, I think. Without that counterbalance. . . [Emily Roth is now on the Portland Harbor project for DEQ – talks about the port putting pressure on Metro to quiet ER]
S: What would you say is your greatest success on the Slough?
H: Well, I think our greatest success collectively is to create a positive image for the Slough. I think people now think of it as a resource as opposed to a liability. That would have to be. You can’t move people to action if they don’t think this isn’t something worth protecting and restoring. So that would have to be the number one thing is, here’s a resource, it’s important to the community, it’s a regionally significant resource. Let’s do something about it.
S: And, are there people, a lot of people from the neighborhood associations on the lower slough who are involved in that kind of restoration and viewing the slough as a resource?
H: Oh yeah. David Myers Eatwell, Kenton neighborhood. Peter, are two people. I know there are others, but those are the two that come to mind on the lower slough. Upper Slough is Alice Blatt and Helen Sherman Cohen (?) and Jane and Jean Ridings, that crew. . .
[talks about no longer being involved in Slough issues; Pam Arden in Kenton – a trail advocate – involved in Peninsula Crossing Trail; Has worked a lot on Heron Lakes Golf Course issues]. . .they were going to move Marine Drive and put it through as a freeway, right through the golf course and the heron (rookery?). That was ’84, ’85, ’86.
S: That was right after the 205 bridge was put in, right?
H: Yeah. In fact, that’s when I worked with Bud Clark to get the heron adopted as a city bird, which was kind of a combination of a fun thing to do and a strategy. Are we going to let a freeway go through the rookery of our city bird, for crying out loud? So there’s a lot of working with Pam and people like that at that time.
S: Can you talk just a little bit about the kinds of wildlife that you see on the Slough? . . .
H: Well, I think it’s surprising to folks that there are river otter and bald eagles and black crown night herons and all sorts of interesting critters that live in the slough because of course it’s a dead, degraded, horrible, ugly, urban waterway that ought to be gotten rid of. At least that was the perception for years. I’ve never gone out on the slough on a canoe trip or kayak trip and not seen amazing things. One of the most memorable ones is doing an early morning paddle with Jonathon Nicholas. We were talking about the greenspaces program, took him out on the slough and, between the St. Johns Landfill and Kelly Point Park we saw fifteen beaver. Physically saw them, which is unusual, to see one. And the tide was out and all their burrows were exposed. As we came by, they’d jump in the slough. It was pretty incredible. You know, canoeing on Smith & Bybee Lakes and having an osprey take a fish ten feet away, stuff like that; watching coyotes; paddling along and having a family of river otter come up right next to the kayak is pretty exciting. All the, you know, smaller water bodies like Whitaker Ponds and Little Four Corners and Johnson Lake and some of those wetland areas out near 181st in that area, Big Four Corners, always have, especially in the winter, are just full of water fowl – hooded margansers (?) and gadwall and teel and buckle head and ringnecks and scop and shovelers and it’s just full of stuff. Again, that’s I think one of the reasons why I love working on urban issues so much is that, having spent a lot of time in the desert. . . the high desert areas of eastern Oregon when I worked for OMSI. You expect to see neat things out there, but it’s always kind of a wonderful surprise to see a river otter pop up on the Columbia Slough. It just, you know, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be there, I suppose, but it’s, it just shocks you each time it happens. Especially on something that’s supposedly dead [laughs dryly].
S: Can you see a balance between viewing the slough as a sort of a getaway within the city and for recreation and more natural environment and habitat and industry, that is already existing? And future development. How do you see that play out?
H: Well. . .
S: Ideally.
H: Okay, I was going to say, we really don’t have an option. It’s kind of a moot question in a way, but ideally, which is different, as the area re-develops, which it should, I would think – parking lots would be ripped up and moved back from the slough and a healthy riparian area would be recreated along, especially that central portion of the slough that’s been hammered so badly. I think that’s probably one of the most important opportunities that we shouldn’t miss. And I’m hopeful with some of the policies we’re getting put in place at Metro right now, the goal 5 work and so forth, that will actually create a regulatory system that would require restoration enhancement as the redevelopment occurred. So when you come back and these massive parking lots get converted to some other kind of use. Okay, you can do that, but the quid pro quo is, 100 feet back, or whatever distance we can come up with.
S: So, using those kinds of strategies. . .
H: Right, right, incentives and requirements and additional acquisition. So, only if we can do that, do I think that we have a snowball’s chance in hell of restoring the slough to the extent that the watershed council wants to see it.
S: Which is to maintain that natural habitat corridor?
H: Yeah, well, and re-create. Right. . .
[development to the east is changing the natural corridor “dramatically.”]H: A deer from Forest Park to Troutdale? Hmm, it would be a challenge. I wouldn’t say it couldn’t happen, and doesn’t happen, but. Coyote, certainly, maybe even bobcat, maybe river otter, mink, fox, coyote, all those, definitely. It’s still a viable wildlife corridor for those guys. Maybe even deer. . .
[deer tracks. The deer still cross to Government Island. You don’t see the mammals much. Talks about a kid at Mt. Hood Community College who talked about how great Houck’s program is]And it turns out that his experiences on the Slough have all been trapping, to make money. Yeah, bobcat, coyotes, otter. . . this was fifteen years ago.
S: Have you ever been to Government Island?
H: I have once. I went out once with Bill Bakke from the port, ages ago. . . it’s overgrazed in my opinion still.
[interview ends]