Wisdom Workforce Partnership with the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services

For the past six months, Wisdom’s social and economic venture, Wisdom Workforce LLC has partnered with the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services to conduct valuable conservation work in local parks and other ecosystems. They have learned much from the guidance and direction that Lora Price continues to provide to our team. Lora serves as Project Director for Wisdom Workforce Development and WWD LLC.

The crew worked in partnership with Damion Coe and Christa Von Behren, Ph.D., with the Watershed Revegetation Team at the Bureau of Environmental Services. Damion is Natural Resource Ecologist for the Portland BES Watershed Revegetation Program. Christa is also Program Development Coordinator at the Rae Selling Seed Bank & Plant Conservation Program which is consulting with Wisdom to pursue a potential partnership. Christa also serves as Instructor for the Department of Environmental Science & Management at Portland State University.

At Westmoreland Park, the team performed monitoring and restoration maintenance of the park’s recently installed natural area. Removal of invasive and nuisance plants included Teasel, Birdsfoot Trefoil, Canadian Thistle, Purple loosestrife, English Ivy, Bindweed and Norway Maple plus other volunteer tree saplings. This has been a successful effort to keep invasive vegetation from taking hold and maintain a diversified balance of native vegetation. We are grateful that BES chooses not use herbicides or pesticides at this location where many young children and pregnant moms congregate.

At Brookside Wetlands, the team performed landscape maintenance including mowing, hedging and pruning of shrubs and then broadcast and mulched native seeds in cleared areas. At Bundy Park, the team cleared Ivy and blackberry at this abandoned house site. The Crew also removed Black Locusts, an invasive tree in Vermont Park.

With Christa the team has performed seed collection and seed cleaning. Seeds were collected from Rushes, Sedges and Piggyback plants at Riverview and in Forest Park. They also work at the Oregon State University Experimentation Center in Aurora planting seedling sedges and perennials from flats into the ground.

Our crew is grateful for the direction they received while building their skills in seed collection and the different methods used to clean different seeds collected. Damion and Christa appreciated. Wisdom crew’s work ethic and their sharing of traditional knowledges.