MONTANA—Over the past two years, the Umpqua National Forest, Bureau of Land Management Roseburg District and the National Forest Foundation have been developing a holistic watershed restoration strategy for federal lands in the North Umpqua Watershed. Our goal is that this strategy will guide us toward creating a restored and climate change resilient landscape.

The North Umpqua Watershed Holistic Restoration Strategy offers a comprehensive, targeted approach for restoration of the North Umpqua Watershed, from mitigating hydropower impacts to fire recovery to other watershed restoration needs. The strategy outlines our vision for the watershed including future desired conditions from an interdisciplinary perspective. It then concentrates on six geographic focus areas and strategic restoration actions for each.

Tribal and partner engagement have been extremely important in this strategic planning process. Following the government-to-government process, we reached out to three federally recognized Native American Tribes to ask for their input on the plan. After reaching out to tribes, we then connected with 40 community and agency partners for their input.

After many conversations and rounds of edits, we have completed this planning effort and finalized the North Umpqua Watershed Holistic Restoration Strategy. We feel that the final product reflects our collective vision for the watershed from ridge top to thalweg. However, a plan is only as good as the action that comes from it.

We are now focused on ensuring that we implement projects on the ground that will help us achieve our restoration and climate change adaptation objectives, but we cannot do it alone. We look forward to collaborating with our community and partner groups to implement projects identified in this strategy and work toward restoring the North Umpqua Watershed!

Learn more in a recent NFF blog post.

This partner submission came from the National Forest Foundation.