The Lower Columbia River and adjacent coastal regions of Oregon and Washington contain a rich diversity of natural and cultural resources managed by a complex array of tribal sovereign nations, federal/state/local agencies, non-government conservation organizations, landowners, stakeholders and others. But our region lacks a current, comprehensive, landscape-scale blueprint that can be used to drive and align conservation efforts to achieve landscape-scale goals in response to stressors, such as climate change, energy development, and land/water use practices.
In response to this need, the North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperative and US Fish and Wildlife Service Region 1 has initiated a Landscape Conservation Design initiative for the Lower Columbia River and adjacent coastal shorelines of Oregon and Washington Pacific Northwest Coast Landscape Conservation Design. This partner-driven, multi-stakeholder effort is an integrated, collaborative, and holistic process that is grounded in the interdisciplinary science of landscape ecology, the mission-oriented science of conservation biology, and the art of design. The process results in a science-based, spatially-explicit product that identifies targets of interest to partners, articulates measurable objectives; assesses current and projected landscape patterns and processes; and identifies a desired future condition, conservation and development trade-offs, and implementation strategies.
