PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Twenty years ago, Ed Kerns helped transform what was once barren and bland into the Springwater Corridor, teeming with plant life and habitat for wildlife.

Kerns, though, is devastated by what’s happening to the corridor now, with homeless campers populating the trail, trash sprawling in places his groups worked so hard to nurture.

“I was both angry and sad,” Kerns told KOIN 6 News. “I’m heartbroken that 10,000 kids that worked on this over the past 20 years, and they planted these trees, so that’s painful for myself and them.”

Kerns has been building up the corridor and its plant life in the Lents neighborhood for 2 decades.

“I planted these willows,” he said Wednesday. “These are cherry trees right here.”

Now, when he rolls through the corridor in his wheelchair, his feelings and emotions are understandably near the surface.

“Its been a labor of love,” he said. “For them to put up 500 tents is going to have a pretty serious impact.”

Perhaps the hardest to see is the number of trees now either damaged or gone altogether.

“Firewood, tent poles, tent pegs. I don’t know what all they use them for, but they certainly cut them down. The destruction that has taken place, and the amount of trees they’ve cut down and amount of plants that they’ve trampled… I came strolling through to look at it before the sweep happens.”

As Kerns talks with the corridor’s residents, he only hopes they understand — but he wishes it hadn’t come to this.

“Lents has been so impacted by this,” he said. “It could’ve been done a lot better.”

He feels for the homeless but understands the city is in a hard spot, too.

The city’s scheduled clean-up along the Springwater Corridor was set to begin Monday. But Portland Mayor Charlie Hales announced the sweep would be delayed one month, until September 1, but that date was formalized and firm.