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Eugene City Beat: Work crews in area parks clear out ivy - The Register-Guard, Eugene, C... Page 1 of 2 <br /> www.registerguard.com I ©The Register-Guard, Eugene,Oregon <br /> loor February 9, 2003 <br /> Eugene City Beat: Work crews in area <br /> parks clear out ivy <br /> By Joe Mosley <br /> The Register-Guard <br /> IT'S THE OFF-SEASON for Eugene's parks, which makes it the <br /> busy season for those in charge of maintenance and <br /> construction projects. <br /> Parks staff and volunteers have been busy all winter, sprucing- <br /> up and improving public spaces all over town. <br /> Take the ivy brigade, for instance. <br /> Volunteers, inmate work crews and workers under contract <br /> with the city have cleared more than six acres of English ivy <br /> from Eugene parks in the past few months and will have <br /> removed the non-native species from a total of eight acres by <br /> the time spring has sprung. <br /> Ivy has been removed from about three acres each at <br /> Hendricks Park and Skinner's Butte Park, and work is ongoing <br /> by Walama Restoration Co. crews in the Whilamut Natural Area <br /> of Alton Baker Park. <br /> "We give them an area to work in, and they remove the ivy," <br /> says Richard Zucker, natural resources crew supervisor for the <br /> city's Parks and Open Space Division. "They also remove some <br /> blackberry, but they concentrate on the invasive English ivy." <br /> English ivy - the same stuff growing on rock walls and <br /> buildings around town - is removed during the winter to <br /> minimize impacts to native plants, many of which are dormant. <br /> The ivy is also easiest to pull when soil is saturated with rain. <br /> Ecologically correct <br /> On the opposite end of the botanical spectrum, more than <br /> 3,000 trees and shrubs have been planted this winter along <br /> two miles of Amazon Creek in south Eugene. <br /> The plantings are intended to re-establish native plant species <br /> along the stream corridor and provide new wildlife habitat, <br /> stabilize banks and improve water quality. Amazon Creek <br /> receives much of Eugene's storm water runoff. <br /> As part of the Willamette River system, the creek is protected <br /> http://www.registerguard.com/cgi-bin/printStory.py?name=c 1.cr.citybeat.0209&date=200302..) 2/11/03 <br />