Partners in protecting Oregon's water.
We’re familiar with it here. The rain and the greenery. Flowing rivers, irrigated farm land and clean drinking water.
Land trusts have long been key partners in protecting Oregon's water. These organizations protect and restore habitat for native fish and wildlife. Their role in watershed protection, however, goes beyond species management and contributes to clean and cool water for local communities. For example, when a land trust conserves a healthy forest, this forest maintain the capacity of land to soak up rainwater and snowmelt and release it over longer periods of time.
Yes, land trusts protect land. But they also work to restore it. Those buffers of habitat along waterways create natural filters and shade that cleans and cools water as it travels from its source. Fish like those cool waters. Communities do, too. As Oregon's water needs become more complex, we must utilize natural infrastructure to meet our goals of providing cold, clean and secure water to our communities and the fish and wildlife that depends on it.
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Policy Advocacy at Work
Photo Credit: Dale Nibbe, Unsplash
Protecting drinking water in Ilwaco
Protecting Eugene’s water source
Photo Credit: Matt Stansberry
Photo Credit: Dale Nibbe, Unsplash
Arch Cape Community Forest
Members at Work
McKenzie River Trust. Photo Credit: Tim Giraudier
For over 20 years, the McKenzie River Trust has worked with Eugene’s water utility to protect the city’s exceptionally clean water.
The North Coast Land Conservancy is working with a local utility to protect the source of Arch Cape’s drinking water on the North coast.
North Coast Land Conservancy. by Randall Henderson