Ordinance No. 20513 - Laserfiche WebLink

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beginning at the confluence of the Coast and Mid Forks and moving downstream to the confluence of the Main Stem with the McKenzie River in order to assess the role that the EWEB site may play as habitat and as a potential stepping stone for wildlife species movement along the Willamette River. We summarize the detailed assessment of the full report as follows. As can be seen in Figure 5, the majority of the area along the Willamette River in the area covered by this assessment is comprised of urban development. Large lengths of this approximately 12- mile reach have only a narrow band of riparian vegetation at best. There are, however, enough areas of wider forested habitat to support a broad array of terrestrial and aquatic species that live, feed, breed and reproduce along the river as well as those that use it as a movement corridor across larger stretches of the landscape. The EWEB site appears to have the ecological potential to help preserve some level of habitat connectivity along the relatively depauperate south bank of the river. In particular, it can serve as a link between the larger Skinner Butte Park to the west, and the small but high - quality backwater slough habitat on the UO property to the east. This offers the potential to create a substantial habitat zone on both the north and south sides of the Willamette River, which occurs almost nowhere else in Eugene. The EWEB site can thus play an important role in creating a larger habitat stepping stone within the Eugene stretch of the Willamette River. In this regard, the southeastern end of the EWEB site could have substantially greater ecological value if the narrow floodplain bench along that stretch could be widened to accommodate greater floodplain habitat that would directly augment the size of the backwater and floodplain habitat on the adjacent University of Oregon (UO) property. However the contaminated soils over the top of bank on this part of the EWEB site make it impossible to perform such a restoration without addressing the issue of removing contaminated soils. Overall, however, the site's location and context offer a good opportunity for it to serve as an ecological "stepping stone" for wildlife movement between UO property and Skinner Butte Park, and to help create riparian habitat on both sides of the river — a relatively rare condition in the Eugene - Springfield metro area. 7