Preserving Oregon’s Lands and Rivers Since 1989
Clean, free-flowing rivers. Plentiful salmon runs. Vibrant farms and forests that provide livelihoods and habitat. From the Cascade Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, we envision a future in which conservation lands are at the core of community efforts to sustain clean water, abundant fish and wildlife, and diverse natural resource economies in western Oregon.
McKenzie River Trust helps people protect and care for the lands and rivers they cherish in western Oregon.
The McKenzie River Trust is a nonprofit that began in 1989 to care for important lands and waters in the McKenzie River area. Today, we work across western Oregon, including the Long Tom, Upper Willamette, Coast and Middle Forks of the Willamette, Umpqua, Siuslaw, and streams and lakes along the coast. In 2021, we grew our coastal work to reach from Reedsport up to Lincoln City, and we opened our first office in Newport.
Since our start, we’ve helped protect over 10,000 acres of land in western Oregon—forests, rivers, wetlands, and coastlines that support clean water, fish, wildlife, and people.
We care for these places in many ways, including buying or receiving donations of land, and by creating conservation agreements that ensure nature is protected forever. Today, we help care for dozens of special sites across Oregon, always with one goal: to keep our lands and waters healthy for everyone.
Our five year strategic plan identifies our priorities and goals. We invite anyone interested in working with us or supporting our work to read our plan and contact our staff with any questions.
Become a member today and help protect the places that matter, now and for future generations to come.
Join our community of volunteers and make a real impact for the lands and waters you cherish.
Take part in our guided tours and community events, and connect with the land and those who care for it.
Explore the beautiful landscapes we protect and learn why they matter.
For over 30 years, the McKenzie River Trust has been a trusted partner in land conservation throughout the McKenzie basin and western Oregon. We have pursued our mission of “helping people protect and care for the lands and rivers they cherish” by focusing on habitat diversity and health, river dynamism, and wild landscapes. But we need to more explicitly acknowledge that people and communities have been and continue to be part of these ecosystems. The “helping people” part of our mission compels us to ensure that we are a welcoming organization that fosters a sense of belonging and that our work benefits and engages all people, not just some. Prioritizing diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) means we must explicitly center the voices, needs, and concerns of the people most harmed by inequities and injustices.
We understand that the conservation movement we are a part of, and the broader system of private land ownership, has committed disproportionate harm to black, Indigenous, and other people of color. This compels us to reflect on how our work has perpetuated injustices, the inequitable distribution of benefits (e.g., access to natural spaces, clean water, clean air), and barriers to owning, accessing, and managing land. Reflecting on this history allows us to more holistically address social issues connected to environmental issues rather than seeing them as separate. All environmental issues have an impact on community health and well-being. That impact is more keenly felt by communities most affected by climate change, land disenfranchisement, and environmental degradation, including Indigenous communities, communities of color, rural communities, working-class communities, and unhoused peoples in western Oregon. We believe these same communities should be engaged and included as thought partners and leaders when crafting conservation solutions and approaches to caring for land and water.
Prioritizing DEIJ in our work supports the work of McKenzie River Trust in maintaining the landscape scale vision required to address climate change and community needs as we work to maintain the ecological integrity of western Oregon’s landscapes. Prioritizing DEIJ also ensures the resiliency and relevancy of our organization by nurturing an environment in which all staff, Board, volunteers, and members thrive and feel a sense of belonging and engagement with our critical mission. Organizational change takes time, proper consideration, and discussion, and we bring forth this commitment statement, having worked internally over many years to evolve to this point.
What is our role?
We are one small land trust in western Oregon within a larger land trust sector within the broader conservation movement. We recognize our power and the need for us to collaborate with others across and beyond the land trust and conservation sectors in working to dismantle inequities and injustices.
What are our commitments?
To better embed DEIJ values in our organization, we make the following commitments, which are supported by a detailed, measurable plan of action and accountability.
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