On Saturday we kicked of our annual riparian enhancement efforts on the Willamette River in Eugene with a work party and a BBQ. In attendance were Trout Unlimited 678 volunteers as well as my family. Shelly and I put the kids to work hoping these types of events will instill a conservation ethic and a sense of obligation in them to care for the place in which they live.
Most of us removed invasive blackberries as TU 678 VP Todd Mullen went animalistic on the Poison Oak, bringing down entire bushes with a steel bladed weed whacker (I know it’s native but noxious). We also beat back the grass near the plantings that we put in this past February.
Afterwards, we met up with TU 678 Officer Matt Stansberry who was in charge of the catering providing hot dogs, burgers, watermelon, chips and the like. Perfect summertime fare. A couple guys from the University of Oregon Outdoors program who adopted a nearby section of riverbank also came to the BBQ. They just started their project this year and hope to build up a core group of volunteers. Good luck with that–blackberry remediation isn’t fun.
Special thanks to the Eugene Stream Team for their ongoing support and Paul Wagner for all of his hard work.
[...] The next day we had another BBQ, this time for TU Chapter 678 and I was on catering duty. The crew: Karl, Paul, Todd, Brent and the Shelly Posse managed to tear down a bunch of invasive blackberries from a streambank on the Willamette River that our chapter has been working on for a while. For a full post on the project, check out the Mule’s site. [...]