McKenzie River Trust and partners broke ground on a major floodplain restoration project on Quartz Creek this May. The project aims to reconnect the creek with its historic floodplain, benefiting the ecosystem and the plants, animals, and people who rely on it.
Partners from the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians, the Siuslaw Watershed Council, and McKenzie River Trust are preparing for a second season of restoration on the Siuslaw River at Waite Ranch. Beginning in summer 2023, the tidal restoration project is working to return around 200 acres of estuarine wetlands to the Siuslaw River system.
Chinook salmon making their way back up the McKenzie River have found more places to lay their eggs thanks to years of work restoring floodplains throughout the watershed.
Three years after the Holiday Farm fire burned more than 173,000 acres in the McKenzie River valley, partners are celebrating the completion of floodplain restoration work at Finn Rock Reach. Beginning in the summer of 2021, restoration activities have included reshaping nearly 90 acres of floodplain forest and returning the area back to aquatic habitat along the Middle McKenzie River.
A decade after McKenzie River Trust, purchased 217-acre Waite Ranch in the Siuslaw Estuary, partners are breaking ground on a large-scale restoration project. Led by the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians (CTCLUSI), the project will improve salmon and shorebird habitat, contribute to regional climate resilience, and provide a place for local Tribal citizens and families to celebrate and promote Indigenous culture on their ancestral lands.
Two and a half years after the Holiday Farm fire burned more than 173,000 acres in the McKenzie River valley, partners are breaking ground on the second and final phase of floodplain restoration work at Finn Rock Reach, a 278-acre conservation area owned by McKenzie River Trust.
Protecting floodplain lands means the important zones around rivers are conserved, too.
The purchase of the Fivemile Creek property restores Tribe’s ancestral homeland while protecting critical coho salmon habitat.