Successful Riparian Habitat Restoration – 15 years of lessons learned from Northwest Oregon

Ongoing landscape scale riparian habitat restoration through partnerships has been occurring in Northwest Oregon for the past fifteen years. During that time, at least 350 miles of riparian habitat restoration using native plants has been implemented.

The Northwest Oregon Restoration Partnership (NORP) is the present region-wide mechanism to provide this plant material. The service area of NORP covers approximately 6,800 square miles within eight counties (Lincoln, Benton, Polk, Tillamook, Columbia, Washington, Clatsop, and Yamhill) of Northwest Oregon. NORP consists of 42 partners including watershed councils, land trusts, Oregon State Parks, National Park Service, Soil and Water Conservation Districts, Natural Resource Conservation Service, local schools, and communities and BLM. The primary objective of this partnership is to promote healthy riparian/forest ecosystem conditions in the North Oregon Coastal and Lower Columbia priority basins by creating a sustainable supply of native plant material, not available on the open market.