Willow Grove Conservation

The Columbia Land Trust used this funding for the Willow Grove Conservation Project, which permanently protected 305 acres of intertidal wetland and off-channel habitat within a reach of the Columbia River that has lost a majority of its floodplain to development. The property provides a diverse and extensive network of distributary channels critically important to rearing and migrating salmonids. The site is hydrologically connected to the Columbia River through Coal Slough, and is immediately adjacent to Coal Creek. Coal Creek is known to support fall Chinook, and is presumed to support chum, winter steelhead and coho. The Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Board’s 6-year habitat work schedule ranked protection of tidal swamp and marsh habitat first and protection of riparian condition and function third in priority. The intertidal wetland habitat is largely intact; however, continuing restoration work will restore native wetland communities, control invasives and enhance the hydrologic connection of the site to the mainstem river.

The goal of the project is to protect intact habitat from degradation. The objective of the project is to protect salmon refugia and habitat that is part of a key ecological process.