Audubon and OPAL Team-up for Immigrant Youth Urban Natural Area Tours
Audubon and OPAL Team-up for Immigrant Youth Urban Natural Area Tours
Audubon and OPAL Team-up for Immigrant Youth Urban Natural Area Tours
by Jim Labbe, Urban Conservationist
This summer Audubon joined forces with the SE Portland-based environmental justice group OPAL (Organizing People Activating Leaders) to lead a series of urban natural area tours with Thai, Burmese, Butanese, and Nepali immigrant youth. In late June and early July OPAL organizer Grayce Bentley and I planned the tours to introduce these new residents to some of our local parks, wildlife, and natural areas in outer SE Portland. Some of the young participants had only been in the United States for just over a month while others had arrived over the last 4 years. Portland Audubon staff Steve Robertson, Steve Engel, Ian Abraham, Meryl Redisch helped lead the tours that included visits to the popular Springwater Corridor Trail near Zenger Wetlands, Beggers Tick Wildlife Refuge, and Leach Botanical Gardens. Volunteer bird handlers Ruben Rich and Gray Gross shared Julio the great horned owl and Hazel the Spotted Owl (both were BIG hits with the kids). All three late afternoon tours ended with food and social time at the Leach Botanical Garden Manor House. 
The tours produced a measure of excitement and awe for all involved, leaders, organizers, and participants. I took personal delight in watching the raw glee of new birders after mastering the binoculars. Their elation renewed my appreciation for the glory of a red-winged blackbird or the marvel of a singing sparrow song. One NE Portland boy learned to imitate a couple bird songs- thanks to some help from Steve Engel- and performed them with great confidence to his peers at the end of the tour.
Through both planning and implementation, the tours built new relationships that we help advance Portland Audubon’s mission and expand opportunities to access and conserve nature near where we live work and play. In August, a group of 8th grader immigrant youth of mixed ethnicities visited our offices and sanctuary on NW Cornell Rd for career learning day and in September we’ll all gather again with tour participants at the OPAL office on SE Division.
Starting July 1, I have had the opportunity to staff Portland Audubon’s new satellite office at Leach Botanical Gardens. The office is part of Portland Audubon’s effort to diversify and strengthen our organization in order to effectively advance our conservation and education mission in the coming century. Through new partnerships and greater accessibility, we hope to continue to inspire an increasingly diverse and transit-dependent population to love and protect our region’s unique nature heritage. Leach Botanical Garden is an ideal location to do just that; it is both at the doorstep to the East Buttes natural areas and in close proximity to much of the region’s future population growth and development. From the park-deficient but rapidly redeveloping communities of Lents, Gateway, and Rockwood to the new urban communities of Springwater, Pleasant Valley and Damascus, the East Metro area poses the greatest challenges and opportunities to manifesting an ecologically sustainable and socially equitable metropolitan region.
