Camas Swale has been cited as a stopover for sandhill cranes and for wintering waterfowl. Native Americans historically used the area for collecting camas bulbs.

Oregon Habitat Joint Ventures in 2004 identified the area near Creswell as a target area for conservation and restoration for its wet prairie habitat throughout the area and upland prairie and oak savanna on the fringes of the swale.

Ryan Ruggiero of McKenzie River Trust says thanks to a conservation easement with landowner Helen Hollyer, 60 acres in the area, including an unnamed tributary of Camas Swale Creek, will be protected. A conservation easement is a legal agreement between a landowner and MRT to protect a property’s ecological value. Hollyer is known locally as the publisher of the Creswell Chronicle.

Ruggiero said that in addition to the riparian oak and ash forest has been allowed to grow undisturbed at what has now been named Hollyer Prairie, a 2009 survey found that the property is habitat to the threatened Kincaid’s lupine. This is the first known occurrence of the flower in the Camas Swale area, he said. The lupine is one of only two host plants for the endangered, and once thought to be extinct Fender’s blue butterfly. Ruggiero said the butterfly has not yet been sighted in the area. Camas Swale, which is in the urban-rural interface, also hosts red-legged frogs and western pond turtles, as well as cougar and elk.

The conservation easement means that the area, which is made up of several tax lots, is restricted from development such as subdivisions. The property would have to be sold as one contiguous block and uses such as grazing and forestry are also restricted. Hollyer will still be able to use the horse trails on her property and develop one future trail, Ruggiero said.

He said MRT used funds from a North American Wetlands Conservation Act grant the trust received in 2007 and the conservation group paid less than half of the full market value for the easement. 

MRT will monitor the easement on annual basis and check to see that Hollyer and all future landowners keep to the terms of easement. Ruggiero called Hollyer an “ideal, engaged landowner;” she was already working with U.S. Fish and Wildlife and the Coast Fork Watershed Council to preserve the land and waterway.

“The project is set up for long term success. Ruggiero said. “She’s very concerned about leaving this place to future generations.” — Camilla Mortensen

Published July 1, 2010 in the Eugene Weekly