The West Eugene Wetlands Program will receive $1.5 million in funding, thanks to Congress’s approval of the Interior Appropriations Bill.
“[The bill] funds each department within the government,” said Kristine Greco, an aide to Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Eugene.
The monies are earmarked for the Bureau of Land Management’s real estate budget and will be used to buy 3,500 acres of additional wetland properties along the Amazon Creek in and near Eugene. The bureau is part of a coalition that administers the wetlands program.
“The money will go to priority acquisitions,” said Scott Duckett of Eugene’s mitigation bank program. “The goal is to form large, contiguous blocks (of wetlands) and get closer to connecting to Fern Ridge Reservoir.”
Ed Alverson, an ecologist with The Nature Conservancy who is working with the city on the program, said the $1.5 million approved for 2002 is the next installment in congressional funding that, over the last 10 years, has been used for land purchases in Eugene.
The coalition, which started the program in 1992, includes the city’s public works department, the Bureau of Land Management and The Nature Conservancy. The program aims to create a viable eco-wetland system to meet public and private uses of the area.
It protects approximately 8,000 acres of wetlands, which are defined as land where water exists at or near the surface of the soil.
The Eugene wetlands provide habitat for birds and an environment for many endangered plants species, including Bradshaw’s lomatium, the Willamette daisy and Kincaid’s lupine, Alverson said.
“A number of native plants listed (as endangered) are found in only a few remnants of prairie wetlands in the Willamette Valley,” he said. “And these wetlands are one of those areas.”
DeFazio requested that funding for the wetlands program be included in the bill, and said he was pleased with its passage.
“The West Eugene Wetlands Program stands as a national model for creating a balance between environmental protection and development,” he said in a statement.
The bill also provides $500,000 for Waldo Lake in the Willamette National Forest. The money for Waldo Lake will be used to improve sanitation conditions at the lake in order to protect its water quality.