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• Acquisition. <br /> • Restoration. <br /> • Education. <br /> Ms. Erickson arrived at 2:50 p.m. <br /> Ms. Johnston said much of the acquisition from the BLM's perspective had occurred, although there were <br /> still a few parcels it would like to acquire and the restoration piece was well underway. The education <br /> program served a larger part of the community and no longer consisted of sitting on the 3,000 acres in the <br /> WEW. It was important to determine how the larger community participated in stewardship, which <br /> centered on the base of Springfield and Eugene. <br /> Mr. Shippey said the Environmental Education Center was originally conceived as the WEW <br /> environmental education center but had expanded into more of a community center, noting the name of <br /> Willamette Resources and Educational Network (WREN) reflected a broader interest. <br /> Ms. Grilley concurred the work was of a broad scope. <br /> Ms. Erickson concurred with the comments from Mr. Moll that expanding the partnership made sense, <br /> while expansion had the potential of decreasing efficiency and creating the need for more meetings. <br /> Mr. Taylor thought the wetlands and metropolitan waterways structures were solid, while the ridgeline <br /> structure did not exist. There was no formal group to implement the TNC CAP or Ridgeline Open Space <br /> Vision and Action Plan. Individual groups were doing work but there was no coordination. The focus of <br /> the existing groups was wetlands and other issues were addressed peripherally. <br /> Mr. Soll said it would be no major challenge to talk about a larger world than the WEW when the groups <br /> met. The work was already being done and could be accomplished in a more coordinated manner. The <br /> biggest challenge was to determine if the existing staff teams could fold in the upland work of a larger <br /> geography into the current teams or if it was necessary to create a parallel set of teams. <br /> Mr. Nuckols said The Nature Conservancy did not have the capacity to arbitrarily divide the WEW <br /> system into three teams, Wetlands, Waterways and Ridgeline, as identified in the Statement of <br /> Partnership, and it was not in their plan to double their capacity. It came down to the same people <br /> working on another set of projects. <br /> Mr. Taylor said it was helpful to have some upper level direction to move forward with the proposal. He <br /> thought the work could be accomplished with a slight modification of organizational structure. <br /> Mr. Nuckols said funding in addition to authorization to move forward with the work was important. He <br /> added upland restoration would be a big push on the SRPOUTS Team, noting plant resources had been <br /> extremely limited in the past. Expanding the work from 2,000 acres to approximately 240,000 acres <br /> would be a significant increase. <br /> Ms. Grilley said financial support from Secure Rural Schools BLM funding was not going to be as much <br /> as it had been in the past, so it would be important to determine in which area the work should begin. If <br /> the scope was expanded, it would be important to focus on what was relevant. <br /> Mr. Medlin said the group had more flexibility if it did not get too formal. There never had been and <br /> there would never be enough staff to do all the work. It was a given that there would always be far more <br /> MINUTES— Wetland Executive Team September 4, 2008 Page 3 <br />