Bob Sallinger’s Legacy on Our Peninsula

It is with heavy hearts, that the environmental protection community of Portland received the unexpected news of the passing of conservation legend, Bob Sallinger, in late October 2024.

It may not be well known that Bob Sallinger has played an essential role in advocating for North Portland’s rich natural habitats and wildlife. In his role as conservation director of Audubon, now the Oregon Bird Alliance, he spent years working alongside residents on the Superfund cleanup that affects the lower 11 miles of North Portland’s Willamette River.

He attended an untold number of meetings, events, hearings, and stakeholder discussions with us in the five years before the final EPA Record of Decision. He helped leverage an enormous community response to the plan. It was a boundless commitment and one he carried into the present even as the cleanup is finally underway.

The first time I saw Sallinger in action was in 2007-8 while observing meetings for the North Reach River Plan where the fate of North Portland’s lower Willamette River was being decided. Of course large corporate industry was well represented. Other stakeholders included the city agencies, and Audubon. They were all seated around a table trying to come to some kind of agreement. Sallinger was outnumbered but vociferous in the face of very vocal industry reluctance to agree to what they saw as “limitations.” He was smart and well-prepared. In fact, he seemed to thrive in the fraught juxtapositions of power, industry and nature.

To help inform the North Reach River Plan’s Natural Resource Inventory, Sallinger actually walked the entire east side Willamette River shoreline. Ground truthing was typical of his style and dedication.

Besides the River Plan and Superfund, around 2007 he helped the Friends of Baltimore Woods, a collection of rag tag North Portland neighbors, by writing an email letter advocating for the preservation of the native oak corridor. It was enough to convince potential agency partners to see us as more than neighborhood yahoos and begin to grasp the potential in its preservation. It was what finally enabled funding for acquisition and restoration of what we now know as Baltimore Natural Area.

But the most intense work he did in our sector was his crusade to preserve West Hayden Island for wildlife when the Port of Portland had it earmarked for a development as a terminal. He fought the Port’s annexation tenaciously, and for years. Curtis Robinhold, executive director of the Port said, “He was smart. He usually knew more than you did. And he was relentless in getting to the right answer,” according to a recent Steve Duin column in the Oregonian.

That is why at this time, some FOBW board members think it is appropriate to support Mike Houck’s resolution to honor Bob Sallinger by petitioning Metro to consider Mike’s following request;

“I’m asking you to do something substantial. If you truly treasure Bob’s legacy I ask that you move expeditiously to bring West Hayden Island into Metro’s system of parks, trails and natural areas. No one has done more than Bob to make that possible. Protection of West Hayden Island is one of Bob’s singular achievements. The most appropriate and meaningful way to honor his legacy would be to protect it in perpetuity.”