Metro is a governmental agency in the Portland, Oregon area responsible for regional planning of transportation, urban growth, parks, and other services. It was established in 1979 and has taken over operations of several cultural and event facilities. Metro has become exemplary in parks planning, establishing the 40 Mile Loop plan and obtaining over 8,000 acres of natural areas. The document focuses on Metro's Nature University program, begun in 1995, which provides intensive volunteer naturalist training. The author describes their involvement with Metro after taking Nature University, working as a park ranger and naturalist while pursuing a degree in natural sciences.

1. Me at the anatomy table with female (front) and male Chinook salmon
Metro’s
Nature
University
Changing lives
Neyssa Hays

2. Metro Parks and Greenspaces
In 1977 Oregon State Legislature approved a new design for
government based on the need for the metropolitan region to be more
unified in it’s planning for transportation, water use, and urban growth.
Known then as the Metropolitan Service District, Metro was approved
by voters and began operations in 1979. Initially responsible for
defining the first urban growth boundary, planning for solid waste
disposal, transportation planning and running the Washington Park
Zoo (now the Oregon Zoo), Metro has expanded greatly in it’s
governance, and is viewed not only as a leader for the region, but also
as a model to other metropolitan areas across the country. While still
maintaining it’s initial responsibilities, voters have also added to Metro
the operation of many educational and entertainment facilities,
including the Expo Center, Keller Auditorium, Portland Center for the
Performing Arts, Civic Stadium, Memorial Coliseum, and the Oregon
Convention Center. Additionally, Metro has become exemplary in
parks planning and operations.
In 1992, Metro Council initiated the “Metropolitan
Greenspaces Master Plan,” much of which followed the 1904 plan of
visionary Frederick Olmsted. In drawing up what came to be known
as the 40 Mile Loop, Olmsted stated that,
“Parks should be connected and approached by boulevards and
parkways...They should be located and improved to take
advantages of the beautiful natural scenery. The above system of
scenic reservations, parks and park-ways and connecting
boulevards would...form an admirable park system for such an
important city as Portland is bound to become.” (40-Mile
Loop)
Such an ambitious goal took a lot of time to truly be realized,
but Metro is working steadfastly on plans that expand those ideas.
Shortly after Metro implemented their parks plan, Multnomah County
requested that Metro take over the county parks, including Blue Lake
and Oxbow Park. Visitation to the parks is very high; in 2004 “more
than 12,000 people attend[ed] special events at Metro parks and
greenspaces, including [Oxbow’s] Salmon Festival and Blue Lake’s
Fourth of July Celebration” (Metro). Recognizing the need to
conserve natural urban green areas for future generations, in 1995
voters sanctioned a $135 million bond measure for the purpose of
obtaining and maintaining open spaces, parks, and streams. Since
then Metro has obtained and at least partially restored over 8,000 acres
for perpetuity and linked them with more than 500 miles of trails (950
miles of bicycle/pedestrian trails are planned). Restoration projects
have been as complicated as turning industrial parks and landfills into
open wildlife habitats. To accomplish these monumental tasks, Metro
partners with organizations such as the National Fish and Wildlife
Foundation, The Autzen Foundation, and local community members.
Great Egret on grass covered garbage hill at the decommissioned St. Johns Landfill. Pipes siphon
methane gas, which is sold for use as natural gas.

3. Head Naturalist Deb Scrivens with Volunteer Coordinator John Sheahan
Nature University
Begun in 1995 by Head Naturalist Deb Scrivens, Nature
University is an annual intensive training program in which volunteers
learn to engage others in discovery learning activities such as animal
tracking, edible and poisonous plant identification, water creature
identification, and other nature skills. Scrivens began what would grow
into the nature education program in 1984 as the first seasonal
naturalist at Oxbow Park. At that time the 1,200 acre park was still
operated by a funding challenged Multnomah County, and Scrivens
found that the nature program she was given charge of consisted of
little more than a picnic table and “Ranger Rick” magazines. To add to
the challenge, instead of the forty hours a week she expected to put
into building the program, Scrivens found that she was allotted twenty
hours as a naturalist and expected to work the other twenty hours as a
seasonal worker. “It was a famine mentality,” Scrivens said, with
everyone scrambling to stretch the budget. For the next five years
Scrivens worked seasonally in this manner, slowly building a nature
program. She was then hired permanently and began looking for
funding to hire another naturalist, which she obtained through a grant
in 1991. She now has two permanent staff naturalists and one seasonal
who work creatively together to organize the education department
that includes Nature University.
As Metro completed the takeover of the county parks in 1995,
Scrivens held the first Nature University. The course is twelve weeks
long, meeting every Tuesday from late January to mid April, 9:30-2:00
and most of the classes are held outdoors, rain or shine, so dedication
is absolutely necessary. In general, twenty new volunteers graduate
every year and begin an exciting new chapter to their lives. According
to volunteer coordinator John Sheahan, the program currently has
roughly forty active volunteer naturalists, including those who
graduated from the program this past April. Participants agree to fulfill
a minimum of forty hours of volunteer service over one year in
exchange for this free training. The program has been known to change
and redirect many lives, including mine.
Staff Naturalist James Davis gives volunteers last minute instructions

4. The Sandy River at Oxbow Park
My Involvement With Metro
I enrolled in Metro’s Nature University in 2004. My
experiences through the course set me on a path I’m surprised I hadn’t
seen before. Inspired to keep my life moving forward, before the class
was over I started working in the parks and had registered for classes at
Portland State University with the goal of becoming a professional park
naturalist. I’ve since worked three seasons as a park ranger and have
volunteered in some capacity every year.
As a naturalist, I guide groups of people of all ages on
interpretive walks through old growth forests, wild wetlands, and inner-
city parks. We play games in the dirt, learn how to track animals, learn
the importance of the smallest of creatures, as well as to appreciate the
beauty of 1000-year-old trees. The majority of these activities take
place at either Oxbow or Smith and Bybee Wetlands and Wildlife
Preserve in North Portland (at 2,000 acres, the largest urban wetland in
the United States).
I also designed and implemented a program for an urban
preschool whose access to nature was limited to the Park Blocks at
Portland State University. Among other things, I used the children’s
natural inclination towards pretend and some animal tracks of paint on
paper to create a story with them of coyotes (played by us) tracking and
attempting (unsuccessfully) to capture a rabbit. I showed them how to
create the story of animal movements using bird tracks that imitated a
bird walking, then being startled to fly to another location, and a deer
whose tracks crossed those of the coyote and rabbit. And I brought in
many natural materials such as sticks with beetle burrows and “oak
apples” from the forest that we used to create art pieces and simply
explore. Additionally, I brought in containers with water from Smith
Lake that contained such wonderful creatures as leeches, boatmen, and
Damsel fly larvae; the children explored these using white dish tubs and
magnifying glasses (techniques designed by Metro Naturalist James
Davis for use at Smith and Bybee Wetland).
Smith Lake at Smith and Bybee Wetlands

5. Resources
40-Mile Loop Land Trust, 2004. Portland, Oregon
http://www.40mileloop.org/index.html
Metro: People Places Open Spaces, 2007. Portland, Oregon.
http://www.metro-region.org/
All photos by Neyssa Hays