Coast Fork Willamette Watershed Council Capacity 23-25

The CFWWC achieved significant successes in a challenging biennium. Our restoration program included 2 instream projects, 8 riparian projects, 3 monitoring projects, and 3 planning efforts, which included one regional effort to align priorities. Our outreach program continued to partner with the Upper Willamette Stewardship Network (UWSN) for youth education activities. We ran the summer youth crew with 10 local youth for both summers. We restarted our volunteer program, conducting 11 events, hosted 20 Science on Tap, and Annual Winter Watershed Soiree both years. Organizationally, there were some staffing changes and additional support was brought on to help with the backlog of work but additional staff still needed to fill capacity needs, the 2025-27 work plan was completed, the 2023-25 self-evaluation was completed, policies and procedures were reviewed and updated where needed, staff attended 11 training events, and our budget has continued to increase annually.

The Coast Fork Willamette Watershed Councils watershed contains 52.55 miles of stream habitat for Upper Willamette Spring Chinook salmon. Limiting factors include high stream temperatures due to a lack of native riparian vegetation, numerous fish passage barriers for upstream and downstream migration, altered geomorphic processes (i.e., sediment transport regimes), altered hydrologic regimes, invasive plant species, wetlands degradation, and lack of floodplain connectivity. The Council’s 2018 Coast Fork Willamette River Action Plan focuses mainly on fish recovery actions. In the past two years, the council has assisted with developing 5 restoration projects that address salmon and/or steelhead and their habitats and 3 landscape-scale instream restoration planning efforts. The CFWWC will utilize watershed assessments, action plans, and relevant Recovery Plans to develop a prioritized list of future restoration and monitoring projects.