What Is This Project?

The Blue Heron Wetland Restoration Project (BHWRP) will eradicate a newly identified invasive weed, Ludwigia peploides, create a sustainable management plan to provide maintenance for a healthy wetland environment and create a community education program for volunteer involvement in the maintenance of urban, mitigated wetlands.

The BHWRP aims to work with numerous contributing and consulting agencies and individuals to safely and successfully remove the foreign plant, L. peploides or water primrose from the Blue Heron Wetlands. Details of the finalized plan are still in development and the finished scopes will be released by late Summer.

The contributing grant providing agencies include: Metro Nature in the Neighborhood, East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District and North Portland Neighborhood Services.

Why Are Exotics Bad?

Not all foreign species are harmful to the environment. It is only when an exotic establishes itself as a competitor and reduces the population of native species that it becomes an INVASIVE! Only a fraction of those species brought into foreign lands can establish in the wild. There is a difference between exotic and invasive.

Invasives are the 2nd leading cause to species extinction. Over 49% of endangered species are declining due to invasive species. This is behind only habitat destruction and actually more significant than the contributing factors of pollution. Invasive species account for over 127 billion dollars in damages annually in the U.S alone.

As of 2008 the United States possessed:

20 species of invasive mammals
97 species of exotic birds
88 species of exotic mollusks
> 2000 species of exotic insects
> 2000 species of exotic plants

Why Is This Project Important?

This project aims to return the Blue Heron Wetlands into its original and natural state. All three ponds provide important open water and shoreline habitat for waterfowl, aquatic plants and other organisms. With the presence of L. peploides this habitat is threatened. Not only will Ludwigia block out sunlight, infringe on total area and strip these ponds of usable oxygen, but these ponds are a gateway to the Peninsula Drainage District #2, Lower Columbia Slough and then the Willamette River. This aggressive and adaptable plant will then reek havoc throughout the waterways of Oregon and Washington.

The Blue Heron Wetlands was the first of only two sites in the state of Oregon to be identified as possessing L. peploides. It is vastly important for a collaborative effort to eradicate this plant from a more widespread infestation of Oregon’s natural systems.

Photos from March 2013 cleanup

Click here to see the photos.

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About ECNA

About East Columbia

East Columbia is a very unique neighborhood due to its wetlands, open space and drainage ways combined with residential, industrial, and agricultural uses. East Columbia is surrounded by three golf courses and bordered on the north by the Columbia River. The entire neighborhood is in a managed floodplain.

Much of the area that is now East Columbia was annexed into Portland in the 1970s. What was once farmland, historically flooded land, and wetlands is now designated for low density residential, commercial, and industrial uses. East Columbia is also in the noise and height overlay zones for Portland International Airport.

Wildlife are regularly seen in the neighborhood including deer, coyote, rabbit, waterfowl, migrating flocks of birds, hawks, eagles, osprey and blue heron.

Since 1999 over 450 new homes have been built, melding new, suburban type housing with older farm house, pasture land, and large lots with older homes built in the 30s and 40s.

East Columbia has a Natural Resource Management Plan created and adopted in 1990 – the first of its kind for the City of Portland. It provides a vision of how the residents envisioned the stewardship and growth for the unique land use issues that the neighborhood faces.

The Columbia Children’s Arboretum is located just off Meadow Drive and is a natural park, maintained by a small group of volunteers and the Portland Parks Bureau. An annual picnic is held in the park each July.

The neighborhood has a nine member board, elected for two year terms. Neighborhood meetings are held the second Tuesday of every month from 7-8:30pm at the Columbia Community Church, 410 NE Marine Drive. A monthly neighborhood newsletter is emailed, and distributed throughout the neighborhood.