Pudding River Watershed Council Capacity Grant 2023 - 2025

The Council Capacity grant provided operating capacity support for the Pudding River Watershed Council. Key watershed issues addressed by the council included water quality, instream habitat quality, riparian habitat quality, and urban challenges. In the past 2 years the Council implemented 5 restoration projects of various sizes, implemented 1 technical assistance project, completed 1 large monitoring project, and initiated an outreach program around our monitoring results. The grant was also vital to our organizations continued health and stability. With support from this project, we completed our first ever Personnel Handbook, recruited three new project staff members, recruited and trained two new board members, attended dozens of community events, and started a new Community Nature Hubs program.

The Pudding River watershed contains 522 miles of stream habitat for Upper Willamette River Steelhead Trout and Spring Chinook Salmon . Limiting factors include lack of stream habitat complexity, lack of habitat connectivity, over appropriation of agricultural service water affecting water quantity, impaired water quality resulting from diverse land use impacts, and low level of public engagement. The Pudding River Watershed Council Strategic Plan focuses largely on fish recovery actions. In the past 2 years the council has assisted with the development of six restoration projects that address salmon and/or steelhead and their habitats. The co-executive directors will utilize watershed assessments, action plans and relevant Recovery Plans to develop a prioritized list of future restoration and monitoring projects.