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Going Greener:
Cleaning up "Sherwood Forest"

Clean up of wooded area on the southeast end of the Chemeketa Community College campus came down to a choice between a scalpel and a butcher knife.

Chemeketa officials chose the scalpel.

“We could have gone in with a bulldozer, but the area itself has so much potential and could be used in a variety of ways,” said Craig Anderson, an associate dean at Chemeketa and director of the college’s natural resource program.

The 10-acre area, affectionately known as “Sherwood Forest,” was the target of a recent cleaning effort by the college and the Youth Conservation Corps of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde (YCC). Members of the YCC, a program that matches youths looking for jobs and work experience with conservation projects, spent four days removing invasive species to restore the site.

Chemeketa ecology instructor Wynn Cudmore performed an initial assessment of the site to determine what could be done to improve visibility and safety as well as restore the area to its natural state. He found invasive species, like Himalayan blackberry and English ivy, were choking the life out of the area by consuming all the resources – water and sunlight – that could fuel growth of native species.

 “These species come in and overwhelm whatever else is there,” Wynn said. “Trees that would normally stand upright get buried by the Himalayan blackberry and there’s nothing at all growing underneath them.”

The Chemeketa clean-up was an ideal project for the YCC for several reasons, said Alyssa Cudmore, a project coordinator for YCC and daughter of Wynn.

“We look for projects that combine education and manual labor. Not only do they earn money by making the college a more beautiful place, we’ve had the chance to tour the campus and got a lesson on invasive species,” she said.

While YCC is open to anyone who would like to apply, the program focuses on redirecting ‘at-risk’ youth in Marion and Polk counties by matching them with projects that expose them to a wider range of choices than the limited ones they might be considering. The Marion-Polk YCC is also part of a larger, national program run by the National Park Service.

YCC workers were only able to clear a small section of the wooded area, but it will be used as an example of what the college would like to see done throughout the site. Chemeketa officials are already seeking outside contractors to finish the work.

Once restoration is complete, the wooded area will not only be safer, it will be more useful to the college. Anderson and Cudmore are already talking about hosting biology and ecology classes in the woods, and a possible interpretative center.

“We can even hold art classes out here,” Wynn said. “Once we get it cleaned up, the sky’s the limit.”

By Eric A. Howald. Have a great Chemeketa story? Send us an e-mail.

Updated August 27, 2008 by Web Services.