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Oregon Roundup
July 18th, 2008
The first in a series of occasional updates on what’s happening with joint venture partners and habitat conservation around Oregon. – Bruce Taylor, Oregon Habitat Joint Venture (503-697-3889)
Land Protection
The Greenbelt Land Trust and The Wetlands Conservancy both hosted events June 27 to mark completion of land acquisitions that have been in the works for several years. Greenbelt is now the proud holder of a permanent conservation easement on the 199-acre
Lone Star Ranch west of Philomath, which includes some high quality remnant native prairie and oak savanna and woodlands with good potential for restoration and enhancement… The Wetlands Conservancy was celebrating its acquisition of 420 acres along
Yaquina Bay’s Poole and McCaffery sloughs, home to some of Oregon’s finest tidal marshes.
About the same time, The Nature Conservancy was announcing its new Yamhill Oaks Preserve, a 272-acre purchase in the hills north of Sheridan among some of the best remaining oak and prairie habitats in the Willamette Valley.
Less recent but probably still news to many: the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department’s acquisition of 319 acres along Beaver Creek south of Newport; the new state natural area is just upstream from Ona Beach State Park and The Wetlands Conservancy’s Happ Wetland Preserve.
The Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board has applied for federal Coastal Wetland Conservation Grant funding for two Nehalem Bay projects. One would fund the Trust for Public Land’s acquisition of Botts Marsh and end some 30 years of land use disputes over the 37-acre tidal marsh at Wheeler. The other would launch an ambitious shoreline acquisition strategy for the north end of the bay put together by the Lower Nehalem Community Trust… Earlier this year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service awarded OWEB
$1.5 million for four Oregon projects submitted in 2007.
Conservation Registry
The Conservation Registry – the slick and highly functional new online database that records, tracks and maps on-the-ground conservation projects – is now up and running in Oregon, Washington and Idaho, thanks to Defenders of Wildlife and a host of partners. Most of the 300+ Oregon projects currently in the Conservation Registry were imported from BLM and The Nature Conservancy’s databases. Other joint venture partners should begin entering their projects as well, both to help build the utility of the registry and to make your life easier when it comes time to report accomplishments for the Pacific Coast Joint Venture and other funders. Testers report that it takes about 20-30 minutes to complete a typical project report using the Turbotax-style data entry and Google Maps-based software. Mozilla Firefox works better than Internet Explorer at this point.
About this newsletter
The Oregon Habitat Joint Venture’s old newsletter, Oregon Habitat, made its last appearance in electronic form in July 2007. The paper version expired in 2005. They were nice products, but expensive, and the time involved in putting the newsletter together was substantial. This is an attempt to produce a low-rent alternative targeted directly to joint venture partners, rather than a broader audience, that I can put out more frequently. Comments, criticism, and suggestions should be directed to me. If something’s happening that you think other joint venture partners should know about, drop me a line or give me a call.
BRUCE TAYLOR
Oregon Habitat Joint Venture
503-697-3889