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Nature Conservancy preserves a Siuslaw River island by eradicating a weed.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

COX ISLAND - On a piece of land where most Oregonians have likely never stepped, on the last day of summer, Nature Conservancy volunteer David Pickering does what he calls the "Cox Island shuffle."

"Watch for tidal channels," warns Pickering, an organic farmer from Otis.

This 187-acre chunk of property along the Siuslaw River, a couple of miles east of Florence, near the community of Cushman, is where the Siuslaw tribe of American Indians once used tidal flats to plant and grow soft-shell clams; where lumber companies once floated their rafts of logs; where an aspiring author once gazed in fascination at, and later found inspiration from, an old house; and where volunteers such as Pickering now traipse carefully, working to blot out an unwanted visitor.

It's called Spartina patens, also known as saltmeadow cordgrass - a noxious, invasive plant native to the Atlantic coast that found its way here probably a century ago.

Since launching an all-out assault in 1998, the Nature Conservancy, owner of the island preserve since 1977, believes it has eliminated most of the Spartina, which has been found in Oregon only on Cox Island and crowds out native plants and eliminates wildlife habitat.

"If allowed to grow and persist, it would basically...

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