Oregon Public Broadcasting

Three years ago, the city of Portland held a town hall meeting to address the rising problem of invasive species. Tuesday, the city took stock of how far it's come. Becca Bartleson was there.

When Portland first promised to take on prolific invasives that range from zebra mussels to ivy. City Commissioner Sam Adams was a main proponent.

Sam Adams: "In the scheme of things it might seem that invasives shouldn’t rise to the top of the list of environmental issues, but for an urban area invasives are an underlying challenge to fish habitat, bird habitat, animal habitat."

Tuesday community organizers joined city and state officials to look at how far they've come in three years.

Adams says a lot of the groundwork has been finished. Officials now know what plants are on public property, and how much ground they cover.

Jennifer Goodridge: "You know you have to know what you  have out there before you can start to develop management priorities."

Jennifer Goodridge is the city’s invasive plants coordinator. She says in order for the program to remain effective, Portland must continue its outreach and education efforts.

Jennifer Goodridge: "We can’t afford to completely tackle this problem with public dollars so we have some existing programs. We’re going to be working more at targeting specific audiences, gardeners. And then also looking at policy changes so that we can get everyone to be challenging this issue."

The city will also hire an invasive animal species coordinator.

Sam Adams set a new deadline of ten years to remove all invasive species from the Portland area.

Sam Adams: "Our next step is to find out what exactly it would take to eradicate them, and then look at the tools that would allow for that eradication in terms of funding, in terms of potential penalties, in terms of regulation, in terms of education."

The Portland summit follows a similar Oregon-wide event where state officials admitted they ran into problems with planning, and funding.

Jackie Dingfelder is an Oregon state representative from northeast Portland.

Jackie Dingfelder: "So what we’re trying to do is set priorities and direction and goals for this program both at the city and at the state level so we have a plan of action in place and we can help fund that for long term eradication of these invasive species, not just in the Portland area but state-wide."

Dingfelder says the key to success is stopping invasives from taking root, before they spread out of control.