Planting for the future

Volunteers with Raindrops to Refuge are nearing completion on a year-long project to restore a Sherwood wetland

By Anthony Roberts

The Sherwood Gazette, Mar 29, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Anthony Roberts / Sherwood Gazette

Shawn Eisner, right, of Pacific Habitat Services, guides a volunteer planting trees around the perimter of a wetland in the Woodhaven area.

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Watching development encroach on vital wildlife habitat in Sherwood's three creek drainages can be frustrating for volunteers with Raindrops to Refuge (R2R).

That increasing development makes projects like Saturday's wetland restoration in the Woodhaven housing development even more important for Lisa Jo Frech, manager of R2R, the Sherwood-based nonprofit that aims to protect area watersheds.

Frech joined a few dozen volunteers at a plot of land tucked between single-family homes, Pacific Highway and a residential thoroughfare at the south end of the city on a Saturday in March. Their mission, and the second step in an ongoing process, was to plant native trees and shrubs around the perimeter of the parcel.

Above ground, the trees will serve as habitat for migrating birds passing through the Willamette Valley. Underground, the plants' root systems will filter water that runs from street level down into the property, the center of which is a shallow marsh.

"We're trying to keep an eye on places like this and keep them in the best possible condition they can be," Frech said.

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