ASHLAND — Austin Machado found his checkered skateboarding shoes weren't much help when it came to digging a hole to plant the first meaningful tree of his young lifetime.

"I planted a tree once, at Orchard Hill School," says Machado, 17, while standing on a shovel stuck into the tough soil along Bear Creek's shore. "Nothing like this."

He then slipped a pine tree seedling into the hole and gave it a quick drink in hopes that sometime later this century the tree will be impressive enough to provide a cool, shady haven for wild salmon within Ashland's city limits.

Machado was part of an army of students and other volunteers last week who planted scores of native trees and shrubs to reclaim and improve Bear Creek's banks in Ashland.

The trees and shrubs were planted along a 2,000-foot stretch of the creek bank, called a riparian zone, that for years has been overrun by non-native Himalayan blackberries.

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Three acres of blackberries were pulled and burned, their roots dug out, to make way for Machado's pine as well as 19 other native species.

The goal is to create a more natural, effective and sustained riparian zone that would be friendlier to Bear Creek's salmon and other wildlife.

"To rehabilitate the creek, we need a healthy riparian zone," says Marko Bey of Lomakatsi Environmental Project, a nonprofit firm doing the work. "To have a healthy riparian zone, we need to remove the invasive species and here that means a lot of Himalayan blackberries."

Over time, the new trees and shrubs will stabilize the banks and help improve water quality in this key stretch of upper Bear Creek relied upon by infant salmon and steelhead during hot summer months.

The trees might not make a dent in Bear Creek's water problems immediately, or by the time Machado's kids don skateboarding shoes of their own. But his grandkids might see a mighty pine doing exactly what the project intended — shading a piece of the creek from summer's relentless sun.

"This is an ecological time capsule," Bey says. "We hope this is an old-growth riparian zone of the future. This is something for future generations."

The effort impresses Machado, a student at Armadillo Technical Institute in Phoenix, which was one of several schools helping Lomakatsi crews in the plantings this week.

"I know this creek has been up and down in quality," Machado says. "I think it's pretty cool somebody's trying to fix it."

This site, on private land just upstream from the creek's Oak Street bridge, is one of 11 riparian revitalization projects Lomakatsi is either doing or helping with on private and public lands throughout the Bear Creek basin.

"We're connecting the dots," Bey says. "We want to make a contiguous riparian habitat program."

A stronger riparian zone beefed up by native species will also go a long way to help in-stream natives against another invasive species.

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife surveys in the 1990s show that red-sided shiners — non-natives illegally introduced into Bear Creek during the 1950s — outcompete juvenile steelhead for food and space during high summer water temperatures.

In cooler water, however, steelhead outcompete the shiners. More and better riparian habitat can, therefore, help steelhead there during hot summer periods.

"Riparian restoration is pretty important, especially with our climate here," said Dan VanDyke, the ODFW's Rogue District fish biologist. "It's warmer here than most of the rest of Western Oregon.

"Anything that can be done to keep waters cool will help juvenile steelhead have a fighting chance against the non-native shiners," he said.

The work cost about $16,000 and was paid by a mix of private funds, grants, in-kind donations and volunteer labor. Bey says he would like to see even more such riparian reclamation projects springing up throughout the watershed.

Bear Creek is pretty hammered," Bey says. "But for an urban watershed, it's pretty resilient."

The last trees and shrubs planted Thursday by Machado and his Armadillo peers will not be the last work done at this site. It's a site "adopted" by the community through Lomakatsi, so this fight against blackberries won't be a one-shot war.

Lomakatsi crews will be back regularly to dig out any regenerating blackberries and pull weeds that compete with seedlings.

"We want these native species to grow big and take over," says Niki Del Pizzo, Lomakatsi's outreach coordinator who helped turn kids like Machado into afternoon tree-planters. "For that, they'll need some help."

Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail mfreeman@mailtribune.com.