Madrone Update- April 2008

[elaine]

Just a brief update to keep you all in the loop. Yesterday, Keith held another public tour of the site with permission from the County. 35 folks showed up from various groups who are interested in this site becoming a park. You can read Keith's summary below. We have been invited to meet with the County's new Natural Resources Coordinator to coordinate clean ups with removing invasive plants and trash before the site opens up for recreation. Unfortunately, she was injured on the job prior to our scheduled meeting a couple of weeks ago. We will be looking to meet with her again.

 

Current time-line is that construction on the parking area could begin as early as next summer, providing that the County is awarded a matching grant from Oregon State Parks local grant program. In the past, they've applied for two matching grants every year and have been awarded both grants. The County considers the MWPC an ally as they apply for this matching grant.

 

Just a gentile reminder that we ask you to continue to respect the closure. This site is still posted "No Trespassing."

 

Kellie Rice

Access Fund RC- Oregon

 

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20 April 2008, Sunday

 

 

Dan Zinzer

Director, Department of Business and Community Services

 

Tonia Burns

Natural Resources Coordinator

 

Dan and Tonia:

 

Our public wildflower viewing tour today at the Madrone Wall was a great success. About 35 people participated including many from the Native Plant Society of Oregon - Portland Chapter, Trails Club, Mazamas, and Eagle Creek-Barton CPO; most were citizens living in the Carver/Damascus area. Their ages ranged from probably about 10 to over 70. The superb retreat center at Still Meadow Community (www.stillmeadowcommunity.com), located about a half mile from the site on Marna Road, again provided a great place for us to meet, introduce people to the site, and then use it as a base to carpool to and from the site. I'm always amazed that, after over a decade of closure, so many folks continue to show up to our public tours of the site. We even found a couple native plants not found on our plant survey (http://www.savemadrone.org/plantsurvey.htm), which has identified over one hundred plant species; one was the Calypso orchid (see attached picture of this uncommon orchid and an

other

of the Oregon fawn lilly that is also in full bloom at this time) that I've thought may be at the site but, after looking for it for more than 10 years, I finally found several!

 

Needless to say, there are a lot of invasive, non-native, exotic plant species including Himilayan blackberry, Scot's broom, English holly, English laurel, and English ivy to name a few. We'd like to work with Tonia to discuss the logistics and tactics for removing these exotics, along with illegally dumped rubbish (note the most recent dumping infraction at the site's entrance involved someone lighting a burn pile at Highway 224) and rock graffiti. We'd like to set up some dates for work parties to carpool to the site to start this work over the course of the next year prior to park opening.

 

As you've both had other items come up and have cancelled our meeting dates/times that have been scheduled over the last two weeks, I am wondering would it be possible to meet with you this Wednesday 23 April? I am available to drop by the Sunnybrook Service Center anytime during that day. I have a few things I'd like to run by you, Dan, as we discussed at last week's PAB meeting (probably for 15 or 20 minutes) and I'd like to sit down and go over maps and exotic plant removal ideas with Tonia for about an hour. Would you let me know if meeting you both this Wednesday would work? Again, I'm available to come by anytime on the 23rd.

 

Keith K. Daellenbach (kdaellenbach@att.net, 503/249-1618)

Secretary/Treasurer, Director

Madrone Wall Preservation Committee

5815 N.E. 31st Avenue

Portland, Oregon 97211

www.savemadrone.org