In May, BEF finalized agreements formally committing to support 10-year watershed restoration partnerships with seven watershed groups located throughout Oregon’s Willamette River Basin.  Working with the Meyer Memorial Trust (MMT), BEF officially established long-term restoration partnerships with the Long Tom, Marys River, Middle Fork Willamette, Luckiamute, Calapooia, and North and South Santiam Watershed Councils.  In signing memorandums of understanding with each of these groups, BEF and Meyer Memorial Trust have now pledged to jointly provide funding, technical, and logistical support to these groups through 2018.

Each of the groups selected for support worked with BEF to design a comprehensive, decades-long restoration strategy for select target streams and rivers within the Willamette River basin.  The comprehensive plans that were formalized and approved this month outline the actions each group expects to take over the next ten years to engage local landowners, restore water quality, and improve habitat for fish and wildlife.

To date, BEF has committed 10-year Model Watershed support to individual watershed groups scattered across Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Northern California.  The newly established Willamette Model Watershed partnerships, however, comprise seven watershed groups working to restore individual tributary watersheds in one single river basin.  This is BEF and MMT’s first attempt to work collectively with numerous groups to cumulatively restore habitat and water quality across multiple watersheds in a large geographic area.  In working with many groups in the same basin, this program is exploring opportunities to share restoration resources, apply new efficiencies to restoration planning and implementation, and utilize common monitoring protocols to facilitate shared learning and adaptive management among all partner groups.

With a long-term commitment to support this work, we expect to closely track and report on progress and lessons learned.