Partners for Fish and Wildlife Focus Areas in Oregon

Focus Areas: Lower Columbia/North Coast, Willamette Valley, Rogue/Umpqua, Deschutes, John Day, Power/Grande Ronde, Malheur, Closed Basin

National Strategic Planning Effort

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program has completed a national strategic planning effort where each state identified geographic priority areas for program implementation. This effort optimizes our program by identifying where in the landscape our financial and human resources are strategically targeted during the next five years. Our focus provides technical assistance and project funding in these areas to achieve benefits to our program Trust Resources which include anadromous fish, declining migratory birds groups, the recovery of threatened and endangered species, and precluding the listing of candidate or at-risk species.

Our proposed Focus Areas represent areas within our jurisdiction in Oregon (for Klamath or Goose Lake Basin, please contact the Klamath Fish & Wildlife Office) with high concentrations of Trust Resources where targeted habitat restoration has potential to achieve benefits. See Focus Areas Map above. Numerous planning documents were considered in the development of our Focus Areas, including Oregon’s Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Plans; Implementation Plans for Bird Conservation; watershed assessments and limiting factors assessment documents, and recovery plans for a variety of federally listed threatened and endangered species. Criteria for focus area selection included: abundance and diversity of trust species, partnering opportunities, threats addressable through voluntary restoration actions, ability to enhance connectivity between public or protected lands, and proximity to existing U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service field stations.

These focus areas dictate where staff spends time working with watershed groups and other citizen, tribal and agency planning groups to help identify and prioritize restoration projects and where most of our funds will be spent to implement habitat restoration with willing landowners for the next five years.

OVERVIEW: Click here for a summary of the focus areas.