Blog

Meet Our New Environmental Education Intern Nate Jensen!

WREN May 8, 2024 0 Comments
Meet the newest member of our team, Nate Jensen! Nate is our Environmental Education Intern through the Land Steward Program of the @mtadamsinstitute Nate was born and raised in Salt Lake City, UT. He grew up skiing, hiking, and running in the Wasatch and Uinta mountain ranges. This area allowed him to discover a deep love for endurance sports and the beautiful wild places that he had such great...

Don’t Miss May’s Wetland Wander!

WREN May 3, 2024 0 Comments
Colin Sayre has been working in the West Eugene Wetlands for 7 years. Before arriving in the Willamette Valley, Colin worked in a wide variety of habitats including the Boreal Forests of Minnesota, the Great Basin, the Central Coast of California, and the tropical dry forests of Maui. He was born, raised, and attended school in California but is now happy to call Oregon home. Christine Calhoun...

Meet Our New Program Assistant Rachel Schneiderman

WREN November 7, 2023 0 Comments
Rachel Schneiderman is a recent Oregon resident, but a longtime lover of the outdoors. Growing up on the Central California coast, she spent her youth playing in the ocean, hiking in the redwoods, and kayaking through the Elkhorn Slough. Upon moving to Eugene, she fell in love with the ecosystems that the Willamette Valley has to offer and after 6 years as an elementary school teacher, she is...

Lovely Lichens

WREN February 18, 2023 0 Comments
By: Kailey Kreienbrink The first time I ever went for a hike in Oregon I was amazed by how green the trees were. I was hiking with my family, and my mom kept commenting on how the trees looked like something out of a Dr.Suess book. Being Minnesotans we had never seen the green plants growing on the trees quite the way they were in Oregon. I never really knew what it was that was growing on these...

Mushroom Madness

WREN December 1, 2022 0 Comments
12/01/2022 By: Kailey Kreienbrink The month of November had a large emphasis on mushrooms for WREN. We started the month off with Eugene’s famous Mt.Pisgah Mushroom Festival. WREN tabled at the mushroom festival, and got to interact with Oregonians from all across the state. WREN at the Mushroom Festival Our table was set up very similar to our Family Exploration Days, we had pelts, bones, and...

What is a Wetland?

WREN November 2, 2022 0 Comments
By:Kailey Kreienbrink 11/01/2022 I am guessing you have probably heard the term “wetland”, but do you actually know what a wetland is? As part of our environmental education WREN goes into classrooms in the Eugene Springfield area and teaches students exactly that. We start the programs by asking kids what they think of when they hear the term wetland. A lot of the answers include land with...

Endangered Species in the West Eugene Wetlands

WREN July 1, 2022 0 Comments
By: Kailey Kreienbrink July 1, 2022 Hi, my name is Kailey Kreienbrink and I am an AmeriCorp intern working with WREN this summer! I moved to Oregon as a student 3 years ago, from Hopkins, Minnesota. When I came to Oregon I had never heard of a Nutria or a Rhododendron but they are both now common in my everyday vocabulary. I thought I had become an Oregonian expert, so I was very surprised when...

Welcome our new Programs Coordinator Isabel Justiniano

WREN June 7, 2023 0 Comments
Isabel has lived in Oregon since late 2018. She recently graduated from Oregon State University with her M.S. in Human Dimensions of Wildlife Science. Her thesis focused on assessing the cultural beliefs of Latin@/x identifying people of the Willamette Valley, and how these influence their outdoor recreation habits and use of outdoor spaces. She has been an environmental educator since 2017,...

Welcome Warm Weather

WREN April 27, 2023 0 Comments
April 26, 2023 By: Nina McClellan Hi, my name is Nina McClellan and I'm WRENs new Social Media and Strategic Communications intern. I moved out to Oregon 5 years ago to attend the University of Oregon. I majored in Marine Biology with a minor in Environmental Studies. In my free time, I enjoy spending time outside hiking, biking, walking, and photographing wildlife, nature, and people. With the...

Two Geese Resting

WREN April 22, 2023 0 Comments
By: Ryan Collay I was driving through and thinking how interesting that there is so much of ‘industrial’ West Eugene that I assume people drive by and wonder, “Why is this wet field here in the middle of town?” But this pair of geese know. For them, it's perhaps a new home for the summer, even a place to raise young, and for others, it’s a respite from their long travels heading north....