Channeling Community

McKenzie River Trust volunteer coordinator Elizabeth Goward connects people with nature while restoring our land and water.

By Jadzia Engle

Brown and yellow Western Meadowlarks darted up and down through the clear, blue sky just over McKenzie River Trust (MRT) volunteer coordinator Elizabeth Goward’s head. The bare, straw-colored ground of the vast habitat stretched behind her until it connected with vivid, green pine trees that thrive in lowlands neighboring the waterways of Green Island. Goward shared her knowledge of the conservation property with a class of 16 high school volunteers. Green Island has been under the care of the MRT for the past 17 years, and now partially acts as a classroom for Goward, who readily reveals her love of the outdoors with visitors.

“We found gray fox footprints out here where you were working last time, not that long ago, and they’re an ancient fox that actually climbs trees and nests in tree cavities rather than burrowing and denning in the ground. They’re more cat-like in that way,” said Goward, beaming at her volunteers. “Oaks can also be a critical habitat for the really cute, cat-like foxes. So if nothing else drives you to plant your oak really well today, hopefully that will.”

Growing up in Salem, Oregon, Goward spent most of her time as a child engaging with nature and water, specifically the Willamette River. Due to years of degradation that the waterway endured as the river was manipulated to fuel urbanization and industrialization, this was not the easiest feat. “I grew up on a river that you didn’t get in as a kid,” and not always heeding the rules, “I’ve had giardia twice because I got in the river,” says Goward.

As a little girl, Goward developed a deep connection with nature alongside her family. She used to spend time at Clear Lake, bonding with her now late grandfather. She now hopes to share that connection. “My brother lives on the East Coast, he’s in the military, and we got him and his kids out on leave and got them on the lake and were able to pass that place on,” says Goward.

Goward often finds it hard to fathom how other people don’t have an intrinsic connection to the natural world around them, expressing that she “really feel[s] like people and land aren’t separate.” Reflecting on her early years out on Clear Lake and her experiences working out in the field with volunteers from various communities, businesses, organizations, or schools, she views “being out on the land, being out with water, [as] a very completing experience.”

Goward progressed through life wanting to protect the outdoors and educate others. Veering away from the traditional route in education to complete a post-secondary degree, she always sought a classroom without walls. By the time she caught wind of the position at the MRT, Goward had taken a windy road through “education, oldgrowth ecology, farming, big travels across the world, [back to] education, and then into conservation.”

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The MRT was founded in 1989 with the intent to protect the habitat on and around the McKenzie River as a means to preserve the living organisms and water quality that were at risk of encroachment by human development. Over the years, they have flourished, expanding from a small niche in the community to a larger force of change and progress along waterways in western Oregon. By purchasing land or establishing agreements between landowners that allow them to continue using the land while protecting it from harmful development, via conservation easements, the MRT looks to acquire properties adjacent to rivers.

Goward shares that the “rivers that we have today really [aren’t] a reflection of rivers pre-white settlement in this area,” adding that they have “undergone a lot of transformation so we can live here.” In locations in which there used to be dynamic, braided channels with expansive flood plains that once fostered a biologically-productive habitat are now straightened rivers with developed land hugging their banks, causing them to cut deeper into the earth and speed up their flow. The land that MRT allocates and stewards along our rivers grants them room to move and breathe in their natural floodplains.

Slowly picking up speed in their efforts over the past 30 years, the nonprofit now employs 13 full-time staff members and has grown to 1,192 supporting members as of 2019. The MRT works closely with many indigenous tribes in respect to land delegation, and has transferred 125 acres back to the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians through a process called partner assists.

MRT currently owns 15 properties and has conducted 23 conservation easements, protecting over 5,800 acres. One of these properties, at the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette Rivers, is Green Island. Purchased in 2003, rich in biodiversity and encompassing 1,100 acres, the Green Island conservation property has reshaped much of the MRT’s core mission to include active restoration and stewardship on their lands. Annual tree plantings began taking place on the property and showed early progress, transforming the once farmland back into a healthy riparian area and floodplain for the rivers.

Today, in a program that Goward has helped build from the ground up over the past three years, the MRT hosts over 100 events annually, including land tours, bird watchings, and a variety of volunteer opportunities, each of which Goward attends. They now have approximately 500 volunteers come out each year and participate in various opportunities, accomplishing the work equivalent to three additional full-time staff members, or nearly 6,500 hours.

Despite all of the support and success in restoration efforts, the trust does not go unbothered by hardships. “There are a lot of people that I’ve heard that say ‘just leave it alone and the Earth will heal itself,’” says Goward.

Much of the opposing perspective to the active restoration work stems from research in passive environmental recovery. In his book, Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight For Life, biologist EO Wilson makes an argument for passive recovery: letting the biodiversity of the world foster itself back to sustainable levels. Studies, such as one conducted by The Royal Society Publishing, entitled Restoration and repair of Earth's damaged ecosystems, analyze the effects of active versus passive restoration of damaged ecosystems around the world, drawing a conclusion that promotes increased consideration of the latter, in attempts to preserve finances and uphold sustainability for environmental restoration in the future.

While these arguments work as ammunition against the active restoration efforts made by environmentalists such as Goward, the unique components of restoration and legal protection that the MRT accomplishes facilitates both active and passive restoration on the land. These combined strategies are imperative to the land itself, fish and wildlife, and surrounding communities.

From trash cleanups to invasive plant species removal, the land and inhabitants benefit from the direct efforts of the trust. On Green Island alone, an estimated 750,000 trees and plants that have been planted work to shade rivers and increase the health of our groundwater.

The spring Chinook salmon are relied on by other organisms within the diverse ecosystem, as they are a keystone species, and find refuge on the Green Island property as well as the 13 miles of spawning ground that the MRT has restored for the endangered aquatic life. In 2015, history was made when the Oregon Chub became the first fish taken off of the endangered species list, initially rediscovered on MRT’s very first 11-acre conservation easement.

Living in towns adjacent to these properties, human welfare is also at stake. The McKenzie River is the sole drinking water source for all of Eugene and contributes greatly to Springfield residents. Beyond a necessity for survival, a connection to the natural world can be extremely valuable to humans, mentally or spiritually. However, the clean land and water that is protected for this very reason is unfortunately being taken for granted, seemingly at an increasing rate.

This separation between the land and communities in years to come is one of the biggest concerns for the MRT. Goward recognizes the digital realm that newer generations are immersed in and that there is “a potential for even more disconnect to the natural world.”

As a volunteer coordinator, she has noted how this may decrease support for the MRT, however, as a concerned community member, Goward suggests it could disconnect us in a much more substantial way. “Most of our conflicts come from a lack of understanding and a lack of curiosity to understand one another,” she says. “If you don’t understand something and you don’t have experiences with it, and nobody ever facilitates the opportunity to, why are you going to care?”

Bridging this disconnect is where Goward comes in, and community outreach helps spark a curiosity in others that inspires them to keep giving back. By doing so, Goward helps to fuel a self-sustaining cycle that makes a long-term plan, or as she puts it, “the forever concept,” much more attainable. After all, healing the habitat will take much longer than one lifetime.

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After planting oak trees that will someday sustain a savanna-like habitat on Green Island, Goward leisurely led the students the “long way” back to their awaiting yellow school bus. The chirps of birds overhead, gusts of wind churning through tree branches, and sun glimmering on the McKenzie River created a sensory-immersing scene that cannot be replicated in a classroom. Goward says the legacy she wants to leave behind is for others to continue to “dig into the world around them, practice curiosity, plant trees, stare at birds, and try to understand and connect to the world.”