Tiny frogs. Busy beavers. Herds of elk. Sure, Portland is a city, but it’s also an urban forest that is literally teeming with wildlife. Hundreds of wildlife species live in the city limits and depend on healthy rivers, streams, and creeks for their survival.
That’s where terrestrial wildlife biologist Jade Ujcic-Ashcroft comes in. He works for the Bureau of Environmental Services -- Portland’s sewer and stormwater utility -- whose mission is to protect public health and our environment, with a particular focus on the innumerable waterways that flow through the city. Those waterways sustain a croaking, cawing, cackling profusion of froggy, furry, and feathered residents who have their own ideas about how things in the neighborhood should go.
What types of critters do you deal with?
Most of the wildlife has some intersection with waterways, because part of the mission of Environmental Services is protecting watersheds. Birds, amphibians, turtles, beavers -- you name it. I'm a terrestrial biologist, so I look at wildlife that spends some part of its life on land. That distinguishes me from fish biologists who focus on salmon and aquatic organisms.
What kind of projects do you work on?
I coordinate the city’s program to protect bird nests, so the nesting season in spring and summer is a really busy time of year for me. I also manage the bird component of the Portland Area Watershed Monitoring and Assessment Program, which is long-term project to measure the city's current and changing ecological resources. We do bird surveys, bug surveys, fish surveys. I work on projects for coyotes, raccoons, beavers. In fact I implement the City's beaver management plan. Basically, that involves coming up with creative solutions to beaver issues.
What type of issues do beavers cause?
We love beavers and coexistence with them is always the goal! Their dams can improve stream health and water quality, help recharge groundwater, increase drought and wildfire resiliency, lessen the effects of floods and create critical habitat for other wildlife. But sometimes their activity can create challenges. A dam at the inlet of a culvert can back up a creek and wash out a road. Felling a large tree or burrowing into a bank can destabilize it. The same qualities that make beavers so valuable to our watershed can also make them a challenge to manage.
How do you persuade the beavers to move their dam?
That is hard, if not impossible. Usually, if you breach a dam and remove it, when you come back a day or a week later, the beaver colony has recreated it. So we use a device called a pond leveler. It's basically a pipe that allows water to flow through the dam. The beavers keep building up the dam, but there's a secret outlet that lets the water flow downstream and maintains the pond's water at an acceptable level.
How often does this happen? I've never seen a beaver in Portland.
They're not very common in the bigger rivers. But they're all over Johnson Creek, the Columbia Slough, Vermont Creek, Ash Creek, Tryon Creek... Check out Erroll Heights Park. There's a beaver complex you can see from the road.
How did you get into this line of work?
From a pretty young age, I was always looking for a way to work outside. I minored in environmental studies in college. Then I decided to get into field science. Eventually I made my way into field ornithology -- birds. I spent a lot of time working for the National Park Service, in some iconic parks like Olympic, Mount Rainier, Yosemite, and Grand Canyon.
What does your workday look like?
Depends on the time of year. It might involve starting work at 4:30 in the morning to conduct bird surveys. Other times I might make site visits to assess beaver activity. Maybe it's conducting an amphibian egg mass survey. Or maybe I'm doing a nest search, usually early in the morning to ensure protected bird nests are not being impacted or harmed by city actions. I also spend time in the office authoring reports, maintaining permits, managing data, etc. Right now we're working on a major update to our At-Risk Species List.
What species are you most concerned about right now?
The highest priority species are listed under the Endangered Species Act. There's federal law that protects these species, like the various types of salmon that we strive to protect. The streaked horned lark is one bird species found in Portland that is listed. Other locally at-risk species we’re paying attention to are the willow flycatcher, and the white-breasted nuthatch. That last one has a close association with oak and ash trees. And our native ash trees are in real trouble because of the emerald ash borer. The loss of ash is not going to be pretty. We're bracing for an ecological disaster. Sorry, there's no way to sugarcoat it.
Any other interesting projects recently?
I recently did an investigation on a stormwater outfall at Vermont Creek. We do routine sampling on the stormwater and we had some high E. coli readings. When that happens, we have to check it out because it could be an illicit discharge of sewage -- that's bad. At first we thought there might be a beaver. I went and looked but I didn't see evidence of beaver. So we deployed some cameras. And what we discovered was a pair of raccoons denning in this stormwater pipe. It's likely that the raccoons were doing their business somewhere in this pipe system, and then when there was a big storm, the stormwater was flushing their scat downstream into Vermont Creek. That solved the mystery, and we didn’t have to take any action, because wildlife scat is considered a natural source of bacteria.
What's your favorite animal?
I'm a birder, so anytime I see an unusual bird or a charismatic species like a peregrine falcon or an osprey catching a fish, that gets me excited. Coyote are fascinating to watch. The coastal giant salamander is one of my favorite amphibians. And there's been a handful times where I've seen herds of elk in the city.
Elk?! In Portland?
Up in the West Hills, off Skyline Boulevard. The Coast Range has a spur that comes into the NW corner of our city. So yeah, I've seen elk a few times. One of the amazing things about Portland.
What do you like to do when you're not on the job?
I'm about a year into fatherhood, so that's wonderful. I really enjoy birding, seeing new species for the first time. I'm also an avid climber and alpinist. I love spending time out at Smith Rock or climbing big peaks in the Cascades, taking my young son on hikes. He's big enough to go in the backpack now so we can go on hikes in the Gorge together, which is super fun.
Help the birds and beasts who call Portland their home. Learn how you can keep our rivers healthy.