Less than an hour’s drive from Portland, a wildlife refuge beckons at Wapato Lake

Last month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service held a ceremony to celebrate new visitor activities and expanded access to the Wapato Lake National Wildlife Refuge, located roughly 30 miles west of Portland near the town of Gaston. The refuge features more than 800 acres of wetlands and wildlife habitat for animals such as tundra swans, pintail ducks and other migrating waterfowl that visitors can see this time of year while walking along a recently opened, 2.6-mile trail on top of a levee partially surrounding the lake. While the refuge is open year-round, public access is restricted in December and January to waterfowl hunting.

For generations, the Indigenous Tualatin Kalapuya people depended on Wapato Lake for cultural and nutritional sustenance, before they were forcibly relocated in the mid-1800s and the land turned over to farming. Since the establishment of the refuge in 2013, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been partnering with members of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and other organizations to plant edible wapato tubers along the lake, restore wetlands and remove invasive species such as reed canary grass.

Rebecca Gómez Chuck is the manager of the Wapato Lake National Wildlife Refuge and the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge. She joins us to talk about what visitors can expect to see and explore at Wapato Lake.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We end today with the 800 acre Wapato Lake National Wildlife Refuge. It’s about 30 miles southwest of Portland near the town of Gaston. The refuge was established a decade ago, but last month the US Fish and Wildlife Service held a ceremony to celebrate new visitor activities and expanded access. There was also a chance to celebrate the planting of the refuge’s namesake edible tuber, which members of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde have been doing as part of their restoration efforts. Rebecca Gómez Chuck is the manager of both the Wapato Lake National Wildlife Refuge and the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge, and she joins us now. Welcome to Think Out Loud.

Rebecca Gómez Chuck: Good morning. Thank you for having me on.

Miller: So for people who haven’t been to the Wapato Refuge, which is probably most of our listeners at this point, can you describe it for us?

Gómez Chuck: I can. And I want to thank you first for this opportunity to share the Wapato Lake National Wildlife Refuge. As you mentioned, it’s 20 or 30 minutes from the greater Portland metropolitan area, right next to Highway 47. It’s kind of close to the towns of Hillsboro and Forest Grove.

This is a pretty special place, where wildlife thrive throughout the year here. People can come and connect with nature right in their backyard, within a short distance of a major metropolitan area.

Miller: Can you give us a sense for the history of this land?

Gómez Chuck: Wapato Lake, it really has a fascinating history and a beautiful future, I think. The history of the place itself is very rich. Historically, the Wapato lake bed filled and receded with the rise and the fall of the Tualatin River. And it did abound with its namesake plant, the wapato. For many generations, the Tualatin Kalapuya people relied on the abundance of resources that were found at Wapato Lake, and it has been and to this day remains a culturally significant landscape to their descendants, many of whom belong to the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. And they did harvest wapato, the edible tuber, from the lake. And today our refuge is working hard with them to restore the wildlife habitat that wapato can continue to establish and thrive in so that they can once again harvest it traditionally.

Much of the land that’s in the refuge was also used for agriculture over the past century. And a lot of the farming family families and their descendants still live in the town of Gaston or nearby. And so this is another great partner of ours, we’re collaborating with this local community, so the refuge is an asset and a treasure to this town. As I said, the lake was traditionally inundated all year long, supported wetland habitats surrounded by hardwood forests, and it supported a lot of diverse native wildlife. So that is our goal here, restoring the wetland habitat so it once again supports these native wildlife, migratory waterfowl, the traditional access by the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, and also so that it’s a welcoming place for people.

Miller: I want to hear more about that restoration and those important partnerships. Can you give us a sense for what the area was like when US Fish and Wildlife took over in 2013?

Gómez Chuck: Sure. So at that time, the lake bed had been in agriculture since there was a levee built around the lake bed in the 1930s. And every spring, the lake bed was dewatered, and then it filled up again with rainfall and flow into the lake every winter. So when it became a refuge, there were still some farming activities going on in the lake bed, and the plant communities that farming supports did provide some benefit for waterfowl. But that is what it looked like when it became a refuge.

Miller: So what has the restoration entailed over the last decade?

Gómez Chuck: Just to put it in context, we are taking a wetland basin that has been in agriculture for many years and restoring the ecology of the site. And of course, a lot has changed on the landscape since the levees were built.

There’s pretty much two components to the restoration, the restoring of the hydrology and restoring the wetland plant communities. Simply, the restoring of the hydrology just means that we’re going to be retaining water in the lake bed. Starting next year, we’re going to be maintaining shallow water there year round in most years. And we’re still working through the planning for that to happen. And then when the water is retained, it’ll support the restoration of the native wetland plant communities.

One of the exciting things that we’re finding is that even though the lake bed supported other plant communities for so many decades, the native plants are coming back. The willows, the wapato, rushes and cattails, your traditional marsh plants. Those are coming back, the seedbed is still there. But we are helping the process along with active planting and with active seeding. And part of that, one of the most important, is the wapato, the namesake of the lake.

Miller: What has the wapato planting itself been like?

Gómez Chuck: Well, we’ve done it several times now, done in partnership with the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. A couple of years ago was the first planting, and it’s a very special occasion to be out there planting those tubers.

Miller: What do you mean by that?

Gómez Chuck: It feels like history. When I say the place has a fascinating history and a beautiful future, it feels like we are, by replanting this namesake plant… it’s hard to describe. It just feels like a very special restoration.

Miller: We did reach out to the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in anticipation of this conversation and they gave us this statement:

“The Grand Ronde tribe is celebrating this opening as both a partner and a tribal community. Returning wapato to this landscape creates a healthier environment while providing tribal members with access to a cultural resource that once sustained us and will keep us connected to this land for generations to come.”

What changed in terms of public access on February 1st? What can the public do now that they couldn’t do before?

Gómez Chuck: Let me actually back up for just a second and thank you for reading that voice of the Confederated Tribes. I just want to emphasize how vitally important that relationship is to the refuge as we go on.

So back to what changed. There’s a 2.6 mile out and back gravel and earth surface trail that’s on top of the levee that skirts the western edge of the lake bed. And there’s a little over a quarter mile of a paved trail that leads from an accessible parking lot to the levee trail. I want to mention one of our really important partners is a group called Access Recreation that helps us to evaluate our facilities and make sure that they’re as accessible as possible for people of all abilities.

What people can do out there now is to observe wildlife, take photographs. Eventually we will have environmental education out there and interpretation. It’s becoming a place again where anyone can go out and connect with nature.

Miller: What’s attendance been like so far? One of the things that seems unique about this, this is a lot closer to millions of people than the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is. But does that mean that millions of people are visiting?

Gómez Chuck: So far, it has not meant that. Although it is as you said about 30 miles from Portland, 10 miles from Forest Grove. Every day that we go by there, that some of our staff is there, we do see cars in the parking lot. When the weather is beautiful, there’s people out there every day. And that’s one of the great things about it is that you can either travel to visit it, or if you live in Gaston or right nearby, you can walk right down from town and enjoy it at lunchtime.

Miller: What are your favorite features of the refuge right now?

Gómez Chuck: Oh, I have to say my favorite feature is the tundra swans. This is one of our most wonderful sites in the winter to me. I know it’s officially spring, but it still feels like winter. When I walk down that path and over the bridge and then onto the levee trail, I can see out in the distance toward the north these majestic white shapes on the water. I love watching and listening to the ducks, pintails and shovelers taking off from the water and making all their noise out there in the marsh. There’s a particular spot on the north part of the trail that’s a big grove of cottonwoods. And one of my favorite things to do is to stand next to those cottonwoods and listen to the leaves fluttering, and then watch the swans out in the distance.

Miller: How different is the refuge over the course of the year, from season to season?

Gómez Chuck: Oh, very different. As I mentioned now, with the water level near its highest level, it looks a lot closer to its namesake, Wapato Lake. There’s a lot of waterfowl that stay at this refuge for the winter.

And then as we get into spring, the water levels are going down, and we start seeing the green buds emerging on the plants, the wetland vegetation is peeking out from the water as it’s going down. Somebody who arrives at the refuge early in the morning will hear that chorus of migratory songbirds, because a lot of them are returning to nest and breed for the season. Late spring blooms, like the red flowering currant, which is a favorite for hummingbirds or rose spirea, which is also a vibrant pink.

And then as it goes into summer, of course it’s a lot warmer, water levels are very low. Wildlife are focusing on raising their young. And so visitors might see fawns run across the trail or leaping behind the willows for cover. We’ll see goslings out in the deeper areas of the lake bed. You’ll see smartweed out there in the water, which has really bright pink flowers, wapato plants, you can see them from a distance. They’re recognizable by the white flowers. If you remember to look up, you might see turkey vultures circling, or the osprey soaring with that distinctive plumage. And it’s a really kind of quiet, hazy, warm time in the summer.

And then in the fall, I love that the marsh and the wetland habitat colors change. It’s turning to brown and gold, matching the red and the yellow on the trees. A lot of the wildlife, especially the birds, have begun their journey to their winter homes. But then we have returning cackling geese, and the increasing rain where the water level starts going up. The ducks start returning and the swans come back. It’s very different through the seasons.

Miller: How are you planning to connect the community to this refuge?

Gómez Chuck: That is a really good question. In the past century of national wildlife refuges, for the most part, decisions about access and about management were made by the managers, the biologists, by themselves without a whole lot of input from the public. But the wonderful opportunity that we have now is that we are directed to work with our communities, to get to know and relate to our communities, to be a community asset, to seek out intentionally the voices of historically underrepresented groups, and to include all those voices in our decision making,  what we offer on the refuge, when we offer it. And so we have a fantastic number of partners and community members that have already been involved, and are very excited to be part of the decision making here. In addition to our very important partner, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, right across the road is the town of Gaston. The Gaston School District is a very enthusiastic partner already. The city council, our friends group, folks throughout the greater Portland area that have already been brought in, a lot of those connections were also made during our community welcoming ceremony.

This is a different model than in years past. It might take a little longer to come up with the decisions, but it is so, so worth it because then it belongs to everyone.

Miller: Why are you so passionate about this work?

Gómez Chuck: Having access to nature changed the trajectory of my life when I was young. It has made a huge difference for my own kids. And to be able to be in a position where that’s what I get to do every day, to work with people to make nature accessible and welcoming to so many, that’s what I love. I just love it.

Miller: Rebecca Gómez Chuck, thanks very much.

Gómez Chuck: Thank you.

Miller: Rebecca Gómez Chuck is the manager of Wapato Lake National Wildlife Refuge and the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge.

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