Beginning in winter 2009/2010 the South Slough NERR, CoosWA, local landowners, technical advisors, and interested individuals and organizations will begin to work on a new approach to manage coastal watersheds. The focus will be on the South Slough watersheds and several small watersheds that drain to the Pacific Ocean between Cape Arago and Bullards Beach (the coastal frontal watersheds). This partnership will provide our community with a way to anticipate and respond to the local effects of climate change and land sue changes. For more information click here. Stay tuned for updates on this exciting new partnership.

In 2005, the Association began a formal outreach program directed to landowners in the Coos Bay Lowland areas surrounding the Coos estuary. These lowland areas are characterized by a higher diversity of private ownership and land uses, as compared to the timber-dominated uplands. The mixture of private land uses, and smaller acreage in these lowland areas make it necessary for the Association to establish communications and working relationships with landowners to achieve watershed restoration goals.

In March of 2005, we began the first series of neighborhood Coffee Klatch meetings - an integral and unique feature of the Lowlands Assessment process. These meetings were held in host homes within each of the six Lowland sub-basins—North Slough, Palouse, Larson, Kentuck, Willanch and Echo.  The first round of Coffee Klatches saw a 16% average attendance and a total of 105 individual attendees.  During this first series of meetings we solicited landowner concerns and objectives that were incorporated into the Assessment and helped steer the process of prioritizing potential restoration actions. Another set of meetings was held in the Fall of 2005 during which landowners were introduced to many of the Association’s restoration projects through slide-show presentations and field tours. In March, 2006, we completed the third round of Coffee Klatches, where we presented the Assessment results and prioritization of potential restoration actions.

The process of prioritizing potential restoration actions is another unique development associated with the Lowlands Assessment. With guidance of the Lowlands Advisory Committee and others from Oregon State University Extension and NOAA Fisheries, the Association has crafted a process to determine priority actions within sub-basins, and to describe how we should best approach those priority projects.

Besides the accomplishment of capturing, analyzing and displaying a tremendous amount of data in the assessment document, the Coos Bay Lowlands Assessment and Restoration Plan project has produced an adaptable model with extremely useful tools for future assessment and restoration planning endeavors.