Nature Unites Us: Conservation Impact in Oregon

Protection, restoration, and improved land management of natural and working lands—or natural climate solutions—can store more carbon while providing wildlife habitat and community benefits. A study produced by The Nature Conservancy in collaboration with Portland State University found that if statewide emissions targets are met, natural climate solutions could offer as much as 67% of the additional mitigation needed to reach net zero emissions in Oregon. We’re working to champion natural climate solutions by providing science, supporting demonstration projects, and advocating for new policies. We aim to achieve a 50% increase in natural climate solutions projects on public and private land by 2025.

Science tells us that the most urgent global threat we face today is climate change, and we’re already experiencing a range of its consequences right here in the Pacific Northwest, including urban heat, ocean acidification, and more frequent and severe wildfire. To ensure that Oregon is a leader in addressing the challenges of climate change, we’re working with partners to advance policies that reduce emissions and increase carbon storage. By providing science and leveraging our relationships, we can help shape renewable energy development policies that avoid negative impacts to habitats and communities. We are also working to support the role of Indigenous peoples and Tribal governments in climate decisions. Together we can help meet our state goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2035.

Oregon’s highly valuable offshore energy resources are creating growing pressure to site new developments, and current federal policy allows developers to claim sites without proactive consideration of important habitats. The state and federal government have agreed to begin a planning process to identify places where energy development could be sited with the least negative impacts, and we are supporting this process with science and technical assistance. We’re working to ensure that, by 2030, offshore renewable energy developments are sited to protect the most important habitats.

The Portland metro area is experiencing extremely hot summer days more frequently, which leads to poor air quality and increased health risks. Due to a history of racial injustice in Portland, heat islands are disproportionately concentrated in overlooked and underinvested neighborhoods that have experienced persistent environmental inequity. To improve the equitable distribution of trees and the many benefits they bring, a group of local partners—The Blueprint Foundation, The Intertwine Alliance, and The Nature Conservancy—have launched an initiative called Connecting Canopies. We’re working to bring together neighborhoods, government, partners, and businesses to co-create an urban tree stewardship model that is community-led and data-driven. Together we’re centering BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) communities to help enhance and expand the urban tree canopy where it is most needed. Our goal is for the Portland metro region to be on a trajectory to achieve and maintain at least a 40% cover of healthy tree canopy by 2030.

Oregon is running out of usable water—a problem deepened by overallocation, aging infrastructure, growing demand, and the increasing duration and frequency of drought due to climate change. Oregon’s water management is hindered by information gaps, limited management tools, and outdated policies. We’re working to improve Oregon’s water security by filling critical information gaps, engaging with community-based planning processes to use new water management tools, and collaborating with partners to develop water-smart policies and practices. By 2040, we aim to help secure sustainable drinking water for the 70% of Oregonians who rely on groundwater for drinking.

The vast, open spaces of the high desert stretch across more than a dozen states, creating a “sagebrush sea” from the Dakotas to California. This rugged, iconic landscape is being lost at an alarming rate: it has already shrunk by half and continues to decline at over one million acres each year. Increasing wildfire clears a path for invasive annual grasses like cheatgrass, whose fast-germinating seeds crowd out the native species needed to sustain both wildlife and cattle. Experiments with new seeding techniques in Oregon, intended to significantly improve the outcome of restoration efforts, have grown to a collaboration with colleagues across six states and an industry partnership to produce new seed types for land managers. We’re working to apply innovative restoration seed techniques to 100,000 acres of western rangelands by 2030.

In the face of invasive annual grasses, more frequent drought, and increasingly severe wildfire, The Nature Conservancy is working to advance sustainable grazing and land management practices that promote resilience to climate change in Oregon’s rangelands and communities. We’re partnering with the Bureau of Land Management to deliver tools in a community of practice that unites public land managers across disciplines and geographies. We’re also working to foster trust, cooperation, and the sharing of best practices among private landowners in collaborative working groups. Our preserves will continue to be important places to demonstrate new techniques, and where we can work with our neighbors to restore habitat and reduce wildfire risk at a larger scale. By 2030, we’re working to help improve or maintain one million acres of public and private sage-steppe and grassland with sustainable practices.

Oregon’s dry forests evolved with smaller fires burning frequently across the landscape. These low-intensity events create the disturbances that many plants and animals need to thrive and leave an open patchwork of large, older, fire-adapted trees. More than a century of fire exclusion has left one-third of Oregon’s dry forests—over six million acres—in dire need of restoration. Now, unhealthy forest conditions and a changing climate have led to unprecedented wildfires and smoke that threaten our forests, communities, and public health. We’re working to catalyze a fundamental shift in forest restoration and create a shared understanding of the need to use beneficial fire in the right places at the right times. By bringing together the many voices and wide expertise needed, we aim to support ecological restoration on an additional 750,000 acres by 2025.

Tidal wetlands and estuaries—where rivers and oceans meet—are some of the most ecologically rich and complex areas on Earth. Although estuaries provide critical habitat for juvenile fish and help protect communities from storm surges and flooding, today only 17% of Oregon’s tidal wetlands remain in healthy condition. We are working to protect and restore estuaries with acquisition and restoration projects and by improving the connectivity of estuaries on working lands. Updating infrastructure like tide gates can improve fish access in the winter while giving farmers and ranchers more control over their lands during the growing season. We aim to protect and restore 1,350 acres of tidal wetlands by 2025.

Explore more about our work with estuaries and tidal wetlands.

The West Coast’s fisheries are already experiencing the effects of climate change, including ocean acidification and warming waters, which threaten iconic species like Dungeness crab as well as the livelihood of our coastal communities. More adaptive fisheries are better prepared to withstand these impacts and can help protect marine species and critical habitats. We’re partnering with fishery managers to evaluate the best available science and collaboratively plan for different climate change scenarios. We’re also working to incorporate climate change into state fishery management plans and exploring ways we can help implement emerging ideas like improving gear to reduce fishery carbon footprints, updating data collection, and strengthening supply chains. We aim to ensure there are no new overfished species due to climate change impacts by 2025