Keith Robillard has his own key to open the gate at some of Metro's most secret natural places. Even Metro councilors don't have a key like that. And Keith is not even a Metro employee. He is one of the people who quietly make our region great. Among Metro staff and more widely in national and even international circles, he's considered a bit of a hero. Once I met him and heard what he is up to, I had to agree.
For more than a dozen years, since he was a graduate student at Portland State, Keith has been studying populations and nesting habits of native tree swallows and violet green swallows in several of Metro's natural areas from Clear Creek in Clackamas County to Sauvie Island on the Columbia River. That's a huge territory, and the 150 nesting boxes he set up as a young student required daily monitoring.
Tree swallows are a species in decline and an important indicator of the quality of our environment. Keith wanted to know what was causing the decline and what it meant for the ecological health of the Willamette Valley.
He was able to band some of the birds to track them over time, examine their health and nesting conditions, and even take blood samples as part of an initial toxicology study. He continues to monitor nest boxes at both Clear Creek and River Island in the Clackamas River every breeding season. That's where I met him.
Keith was finishing up a site visit and preparing to leave Metro's River Island Natural Area when I was getting a tour of the work we are just beginning there (thanks to the Natural Areas Restoration Levy the region passed in May). Keith pulled out his camera to show me that day's finds, including rare insects he's been discovering as part of his work.
For an agency like Metro with about 16,000 acres of parks and natural areas to protect, having more than twelve years of very precise data on a wildlife species is priceless. In our case, it's also free. Keith's master's thesis, "Breeding Ecology of Tree Swallows in the Northern Willamette River Basin, Oregon in 2006" turned out to be only the beginning of his work.
His research continues nearly every day, and what he is learning and telling us is that the wellbeing of our native birds and insects is inextricably interwoven with our wellbeing as a community. And that wellbeing, I am learning, is inextricably dependent on the devotion of people like Keith Robillard.