Willamette Slough restoration project reaches final year

The restorationists dragged their canoe onto the north shore of Minto-Brown Island and embarked on a slow walk around the shoreline, wearing waders and backpacks sloshing with herbicide. They left blue in their wake.

It’s the fourth, and hopefully final, year of herbicide treatment in an ongoing battle against Uruguayan water primrose, also called Ludwigia, in the Willamette Slough. The invasive plant spreads across the river and its long, impassable roots leech oxygen from it,…