Estuaries Campaign

Oregon Shores is committed to a long-term effort to assure comprehensive planning for all of the state’s estuaries. We advocate for policies that guard the future of our estuaries by addressing the need for climate resilience and protection of species and habitats, and by considering their links to watersheds, the nearshore ocean, and surrounding communities. The goal of the Campaign for Oregon’s Estuaries is to build a strong popular movement for conserving our estuarine resources, based on broad public understanding of the importance of these places where rivers meet the sea. Your donations make our work possible.

Estuaries are essential.

Coos Bay Millicoma Marsh near Catching Slough.\Photo by Mike Graybill.

They are vital coastal ecosystems, sheltered areas where freshwater and seawater mix, arenas of constant change where tides rise and fall, river flows shift, and migratory creatures come and go. They are among the most productive and important ecosystems on the planet, offering habitat and abundant food for fish and wildlife. Often called “nurseries of the sea,” estuaries are essential to the health of marine ecosystems. They are crucial for the life cycles of many species that migrate to and from the coastal ocean, providing nutrients that fuel food webs on land and at sea. 

In the Oregon Conservation Strategy, our state's plan for conserving species and their ecosystems, estuaries are considered key “strategy habitats” because protecting them provides important benefits to many threatened and endangered species.

Pelicans in Yaquina estuary.\Photo by Rena Olson.

Estuaries foster biodiversity with diverse habitats including eelgrass beds, mudflats, saltmarshes, and tidal swamps. They are crucial for buffering the impacts of climate change, moderating storm surges, and improving water quality. These “ecosystem services” are foundational for coastal communities, bolstering resilience to flooding and storm surges and supporting economies based on abundant natural resources, such as fisheries, recreation, and tourism. By protecting Oregon’s estuaries, we can increase coastal resilience to climate change while doing our share as part of a worldwide network of stewardship for the global ocean. 

One important aim of the Campaign for Oregon’s Estuaries is to promote responsible management and protection of Oregon’s estuaries by strengthening Estuary Management Plans (EMPs) throughout the coastal region. As part of Oregon’s land use planning system, our 22 major estuaries are zoned and managed by local governments through EMPs, which are incorporated within their comprehensive plans. However, all of these EMPs are decades old. They are not designed to address the challenges created by climate change, nor do they meaningfully consider endangered species and habitat protection. Our goal is to ensure that EMPs for all of Oregon's estuaries are modernized and expanded in scope to encompass the need to preserve, enhance, and restore estuarine resources as we address a challenging future. One aspect of this effort will be to encourage the state’s Coastal Management Program to produce a template—a “guidance document”—for creating comprehensive EMPs, assisting local governments which often have limited planning capacity.

Within the current structure of the land use planning system, separate EMPs are done for each estuary, and these plans direct management of each estuary separate from its adjacent shorelands, watershed, the nearshore ocean, and connections to other estuaries, without acknowledging the links among systems and species. As we plan to maintain the vitality of our estuaries, the focus of our strategy must be wider.

The vision underlying our Campaign for Oregon’s Estuaries is holistic, linking estuaries to their watersheds and the nearshore ocean and linking human communities to natural ones. We see estuaries as the linchpin ecosystems weaving together the coastal environment, and will work to bring this landscape-level, ecosystem-based perspective to their planning and management. We depend on estuaries for many things. If they are to thrive in this human-dominated world, estuaries also depend on us. This is the mission of the Campaign for Oregon’s Estuaries.

Key objectives of the Campaign:

• Watershed-level planning and ecosystem-based approaches to management which acknowledges the connections among systems so as to better integrate the implementation of statewide planning goals
• Climate change mitigation and resilience, including upslope migration of habitats and nature-based solution which employ natural features to mitigate hazards while also enhancing ecosystem integrity and biodiversity
• Incorporation of species and habitat protection within land use planning, with special focus on endangered and threatened species and those identified as species of concern in the Oregon Conservation Strategy
• Emphasis on the role of estuaries in carbon sequestration (“blue carbon”)
• Increased restoration efforts; planning for estuaries that includes their entire historical ranges, not just the more limited areas that remain after diking, filling, and shoreline armoring
• Linkage of estuarine functions to water quality
• Extensive community engagement, spurred by outreach to all segments of communities throughout watersheds  
• Recognition of Tribal sovereignty and full engagement with tribal concerns, including the acknowledgment of Traditional or Indigenous Ecological Knowledge as valuable and necessary to appropriately manage estuarine resources
• Statewide public education about estuarine ecology and resources, and their place in Oregon’s history and environment, for all ages and demographic groups  

Support Oregon's Estuaries

Here are links to other pages in our section on the Campaign for Oregon's Estuaries:

• Campaign for Oregon's Estuaries main page
• All About EMPs
• Coos Bay Estuary Management Plan
• Yaquina Bay Estuary Management Plan

Salmon River spit.\Photo by Jack Doyle.