The Portland Chapter enjoyed a beautiful day of sunshine on the Oregon Coast this past weekend for our bi-annual Oswald West Action Day. Every spring and fall, the chapter hosts a day of stewardship at Oswald West State Park, showing some love to our adopted beach “Shorties”. This month, we partnered with Trailkeepers of Oregon, Oregon State Parks, Cape Falcon Marine Reserve Program, and Public Coast Brewing.
The day began with a guided hike to Devil’s Cauldron, overlooking the Cape Falcon Marine Reserve. Angela Whitlock, Marine Reserve Program Coordinator for the North Coast Land Conservancy, brought a scope and pointed out the last few seabirds still hanging out on the cliffs and offshore islands. Spotted were Brown Pelicans, Cormorants, and Western Gulls. We also heard the barking of a sea lion from the rocks below.
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Volunteers who signed up to work with Trailkeepers of Oregon got to work blocking off user-made trails throughout the west side of the park, which helps to mitigate erosion and damage to native vegetation.
Surfrider volunteers scoured the beach for trash, especially looking in the rocks and logs, where food wrappers and styrofoam get lodged, as well picking up lots of microplastics. An artist in attendance collected these microplastics for her art- an awesome way to repurpose!
Afterwards, we all gathered at the picnic area to enjoy cold bevvies from the awesome folks at Public Coast Brewing, including a blueberry seltzer made with berries from their farm on Hwy 26 (which you likely drove past on your way to the coast!). Public Coast also provided spent grain bags for the beach cleanup, to eliminate the use of plastic trash bags, and provided some sweet merch for our raffle.
Oregon State Parks joined to help haul the 89 lbs of trash we collected and all the trail maintenance equipment back up from the beach.
Thank you to everyone who spent your Saturday with us! This stewardship is not possible without all your hard work! See you next spring for another Action Day!