CoastWatch Overview

Through CoastWatch, the Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition enables citizens to exercise a personal form of stewardship over a stretch of Oregon’s shore.  Founded in 1993, CoastWatch is a network of dedicated volunteers who monitor Oregon’s shoreline.

Each CoastWatch volunteer adopts a segment of Oregon’s coast; any number of people can adopt a particular mile. More than 750 individuals, families, couples, schools, businesses, hiking groups and more are currently involved in observing and filing reports on CoastWatch miles.  

CoastWatch volunteers make their miles a part of their lives. They visit four times a year, seasonally, noting natural events and human-induced changes. CoastWatcher volunteers also take part in making decisions that affect their community on the coast.

Volunteers come from all walks of life and all age groups. Through an orientation and educational opportunities both in the field and online, volunteers increase their skills in observing and reporting on the shoreline environment. Those with knowledge relevant to monitoring a mile can serve as mentors to other mile adopters.

Through CoastWatch's mile program, Oregon Shores conservation program, the Coastwatch co-science program and CoastWatch in the Schools, volunteers have multiple opportunities and ways to participate. They can simply walk and fill out the observation form four times a year; they can monitor marine debris and survey bird and animal populations; they can call attention to dumping, illegal harvesting and wetland filling. This information is of value to Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition in its advocacy work, as well as to resource agencies, local officials and citizens, other environmental groups, and academic researchers. 

For 52 years, Oregon Shores has sought to protect the coast in land use hearings, regulatory board meetings, and courtrooms. This is necessary work, but environmental action becomes dry and abstract when it deals only with legal processes. CoastWatch is designed to root our larger purposes more firmly in the ground we are determined to protect and conserve. This program is based on volunteers learning about and becoming connected to particular places, pooling their knowledge and then sharing this personal experience with the community through education and advocacy. The goal is to create a dramatically effective means of involving citizens in deciding the shoreline’s future.

The soul of CoastWatch, however, will remain the intimate bonding of the individual, family or team of volunteers to the land and water along one stretch of shoreline. Adopting a mile involves time and work, but it is intended to be fun and intriguing as well—a chance to become a working naturalist, using a mile of the Oregon shore as classroom and testing ground.

Oregon Shores is looking for people who care about Oregon’s coast and are willing to adopt miles and begin watching over them. Stewardship and vigilance can begin right away—more detailed observation will come with time. New mile adopters can be helpful anywhere. Those able to reach remote or rugged areas—sea kayakers, horseback riders, hikers, surfers and divers, among others—can play an especially valuable role.

Through this form of stewardship over our shoreline, we can make a powerful difference in the future of the coastal region we all prize. CoastWatch is becoming a tradition that will be passed on from parents to children and from one generation to the next.

Those who would like to adopt a mile, who would like to assist us in funding this enterprise, or who would like to participate in any other capacity, are urged to contact the program and take their place within the CoastWatch network.