The Bankston Family Nature Preserve and other wetland locations on the Tualatin River were officially added to King City’s Kingston Terrace local wetlands inventory on April 15.
At their meeting on April 15, King City Councilors adopted phase two of their local wetlands inventory, barring Bankston Preserve and other wetlands like it from future Kingston Terrace development.
Founder of the Bankston Preserve and regular advocate for protecting wetlands from development, Carla Bankston died on April 6. Her family’s conservation area was established in 2009 by Bankston and her mother, Sharleen and contains around 13 acres of wetland running along the Tualatin River.
“She and her mother, Charlene, created the Bankston Conservation Easement to provide a home for wildlife, native vegetation, and to protect the Tualatin River,” said Rivermeade resident Dean Blair at the April 15 meeting. “It’s a gem that I’m glad to see King City is appreciating at this point.”
Bankston and her family had lived on the property that now makes up the wildlife preserve since 1975, and the acreage was routinely discussed for development, primarily the extension of Fischer Road, which, if approved, would have been routed through the preserve.
The completion of the local wetland inventory was mandated in a Construction Excise Task grant that King City was approved for in 2020, to assist with the Kingston Terrace project.
King City Planner Max Carter told councilors at their March 18 meeting that the city went through a “rigorous” 18-month approval process to determine where a significant wetland was.
“In October 2025, the city received an approval letter,” Carter said. “Essentially, this is phase two of our local wetland inventory because phase one was approved in 2023…our own wetland completes that.”
The recent additions to the city’s inventory include six natural areas that exist between 137th Ave and Roy Rogers Road, one of which is the Bankston Preserve.
“This ordinance is adopting regulatory protections of wetlands that have been identified by wetland scientists as ecologically locally significant,” Carter said. “This will be the map that is in our code meaning, there can be no housing, commercial, anything within these 100 foot boundaries of these locally significant wetlands.”
Carter explained that the wetlands’ significant protections prohibited development, including roadways, within 100 feet of the areas, making the original Fischer Road extension impossible.
“My understanding is that the road would have to navigate around that,” Carter said about Fischer Road. “So if we are talking about the collector road over on Fischer, it would have to go north around that wetland.”
Many of those in attendance at the March 18 meeting supported the inventory’s adoption, and at the April 15 meeting, public commenters applauded the city for recognizing the Bankston Preserve and securing its existence as a significant natural biome for the time being.
“One reason I’m saddened by Carla’s passing is because she didn’t see the day that the threat posed to the Bankston Nature Preserve came to an end,” said resident Mike Myers. “I ask this community and this city to take meaningful action to ensure the natural habitat she and her family cherished is protected.”
In 2024, Bankston published an opinion piece challenging the rhetoric of the previous King City Council and urged residents to help protect her preserve.
“City staff go so far as to claim that a conservation easement is not a ‘nature preserve, ‘ but just a way of keeping the land ‘private’ and that calling it a nature preserve is a lie,” Bankston wrote. “My family has lived on the property since 1975. In 2009, 12 acres of forest along the river were made into a conservation easement called the Bankston Nature Preserve.”
King City Councilors unanimously approved phase two of the Kingston Terrace local wetlands inventory.
In addition to adding property to the inventory, the ordinance also corrected a Scribner’s Error relating to the city code on upland wildlife habitat conservation and developmental impact within conservation areas. The code previously used the word “minimum” instead of “maximum” when outlining the permitted percentages of developmental disturbment.
