Get active. Explore The Intertwine and become active in The Intertwine Alliance

Ross Island Vision Team: Envisioning Ross Island
The Institute has produced, with its partners at the Willamette Riverkeeper, Audubon Society of Portland, Greenworks landscape architecture, architects, and landscape architects a plan for Ross Island, Envisioning Ross Island (.pdf), which lays out scenarios for how Ross and its sister islands Hardtack, East and Toe, might be managed as a unit with the Holgate Channel and the 160-acre city-owned Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge as an urban wildlife refuge complex, public natural area park, and place to contemplate nature in the heart of downtown Portland.

Bi-State Trail Plan Unveiled The long awaited Bi-State Trail Plan was released at a meeting of The Intertwine Alliance on April 9th in downtown Vancouver, Washington. The plan contains information regarding the values of a regional trail network and displays 37 regional trail elements of the proposed regional system. The plan was created by the Urban Greenspaces Institute, National Park Service's Rivers and Trails Conservation Assistance Program, Metro Sustainability Center and Vancouver-Clark Parks and Recreation. To read the plan click here.

Oregon Public Broadcasting features Portland Memorial Mausoleum mural project. On April 15th OPB's Art Beat Program ran a 10 minute special feature on the 50,000 square foot wetland mural that the Urban Greenspaces Institute collaborated with ArtFX Murals to produce on the Portland Memorial Mausoleum overlooking 160-acre Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge. Click here to view OPBs video.

Urban Greenspaces Institute participates in creating an agricultural and natural resources map for Metro's Urban and Rural Reserves planning.

October 2nd and 3rd Dedication of Portland Memorial Mausoleum and Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge Mural, the nation's largest hand painted mural
[See photo]
[Download invitation]

UGI National Advisory Board member, Jon Kulser , honored by the Association of Wetland Scientists with Lifetime Achievement Award

Institute Director Mike Houck receives The Garden Club of America Club Conservation Commendation from the Portland Garden Club, Wednesday, June 11, 2009

Memorial Mausoleum Mural Completed!

Quiet, No Wake Zone For Holgate Channel and Ross Island

Wild in the City Field Trips - Exploring Regional Greenspaces by Kayak, Bike and Foot

Urban Green, A Radio Documentary on Green Planning in Portland.

Get Involved

The best way to get involved in urban parks, trails, and Greenspaces issues is to join one of the numerous “friends” organizations that have sprung up throughout the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan region. For a listing of these groups see the latest version of the Urban Natural Resources Directory, produced by the Audubon Society of Portland. This directory lists all non-profit organizations, large and small, all agencies, watershed councils, and friends groups that are engaged in urban Greenspaces issues.

The Audubon Society of Portland has a comprehensive website for its FAUNA community outreach effort that will provide you with up-to-the minute information on hearings and other policy related issues related to fish and wildlife habitat and urban natural resources.

The Coalition for a Livable Future has an informative and timely list serve that goes to its more than 70 member organizations and interested individuals. The CLF is a coalition of affordable housing advocates, transit advocates, urban designers, food policy advocates, parks, trails and greenspace advocates, and growth management specialists.

If you have ideas for how you might contribute to the Urban Greenspaces Institute’s mission directly please send us your ideas at info@urbangreenspaces.org.

"Everybody has a ditch, or ought to. For only the ditches---and the fields, the woods, the ravines---can teach us to care enough for all the land."

-- Robert Michael Pyle, The Thunder Tree, 1993

Click here for contact information for the Institute.