2023 Schedule – Pacific Time

The program will highlight innovative partnerships to restore water for climate resiliency, habitat, and communities. Water is often an overlooked component of land trust work. As we reach ecological tipping points, it is clear that we need to act holistically across landscapes to restore resilient ecosystems. Recognizing the unique opportunities to restore water as part of land conservation, land trusts are leveraging new partnerships to integrate water into acquisition and stewardship projects. The program will highlight partnerships touching on Streamflow Restoration, Drinking Water Protection, Improved Water Quality, and Wet Meadow Restoration. Land conservation can provide opportunities to restore streamflows through the protection of water rights associated with the property as illustrated by the partnership between Deschutes Land Trust and Deschutes River Conservancy to improve water quantity in Whychus Creek. Land conservation can be an important tool to protect the quality and reliability of community drinking water sources. This program will highlight The Conservation Fund’s partnership with the coastal community of Port Orford to conserve land within its drinking watershed. Land conservation and stewardship provides opportunities to improve water quality. The Wetlands Conservancy’s work as part of the Tualatin Basin Beaver Strategy provides an example of collaborating across sectors to create beaver coexistence strategies to improve both water quality and quantity. In Southern Oregon, working lands easements with Oregon Agricultural Trust help ranchers continue traditional irrigation management practices that sustain ranching communities and waterfowl in the Pacific Flyway. Finally, Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts and its partners have worked hard to identify and develop funding sources to support the critical role of land in protecting safe and abundant drinking water; updates and opportunities will be discussed.