Director's Letter
Q: Why Bother?
A: Because We Must
Letter from the Executive Director, Joe S. Whitworth
Spring 2008
We have devoted a lot of recent Riverkeeper pages to our increasingly refined focus: getting and keeping streams healthy. StreamBank® stands to accelerate the pace and scale of stream restoration. Healthy Waters Institute® seeks to engage a generation that understands and cares for their backyard streams.
But why does all this matter?
Oregon Trout and other groups report a lot of activity: stream miles restored, acres replanted, projects completed, etc. Taken out of context, all this effort seems significant. And it is important—our freshwater systems would certainly be in worse shape if not for these projects. But is this effort enough?
Judging by the one report card that matters — overall freshwater health — we’re losing the race. Key indicators have been trending down for years, despite the efforts of the conservation community.
In a foreboding issue of Conservation Biology (October 1999), researchers reported that we were on pace to lose 4% of North America’s freshwater species each decade without significant changes in how restoration happens. (1) Despite decades of effort, freshwater species declined overall some 28% between 1970 and 2003, (2) even with the increased attention to water health sparked by the Clean Water Act.
Closer to home, the most recent national sampling shows Oregon’s streams to be less supportive of aquatic life, less able to provide fish safe to eat, and more chemically unsafe to swim as compared to the national average: 30,000 of our 115,000 stream miles fail to support aquatic life. (3)
And our kids? They are not getting outside and exploring their environment— losing a vital connection with the natural world. In the United States, children are spending less time playing outside, or playing at all in any unstructured way. (4) From 1997-2003, the number of children ages nine to twelve engaging in outdoor activities such as hiking, walking, fishing, beach play and gardening declined 50%. (5)
We must reverse these trends. Looming pressures of population growth and climate change make the matters unavoidable. With a projected 1 million new residents arriving in Oregon in the next 20 years, (6) pressure will continue to mount on the quantity and quality of water in a state renowned for its waters. Climate change over the next 100 years will also cause significant changes in if, when, where, and how we get precipitation. These pose serious risks for freshwater ecosystems, and without redress, will bring hardship to the numerous critical services they provide human and non-human populations. (7) This includes regional hallmark species like salmon and steelhead, but also consumers, schools, and municipalities; those with water quality and quantity-dependant pursuits such as farming, ranching, hunting, and fishing.
We are dedicated to reversing these trends, accelerating restoration, expanding conservation effort, and getting kids out in the field. StreamBank focuses on restoration work. Last fall, we implemented three pilot projects through StreamBank software to great success, shaving 50%-75% off the project completion time compared to other, similar projects. By expediting funding and permitting, projects can move with greater speed and cause less frustration on the part of landowners and restoration professionals. In the words of Harry Hoogesteger of the South Coast Watershed Council, a project coordinator for a pilot test:
“This is a new way of restoring our watershed. It has the potential to revolutionize fish recovery not only in Oregon but throughout the Northwest. It’s amazing to be able to design and fund a complex, multi-faceted restoration project in essentially a couple of hours. We put together components of fencing, planting, off-stream watering and the addition of large wood… worked out a budget, located the project and identified sources of funding. Usually that would take me several months. This morning it took a couple of hours.”
This summer, we will implement about 20 projects through StreamBank with public and private funding partners. This larger test will put pressure on the software system so we can look for leaks and fix them before the planned launch of the program in 2009.
The Healthy Waters Institute (HWI) works to get kids outside, to get their feet wet and hands dirty, creating a tangible connection with their home waters. To improve our education effort, we have initiated quantitative research of environmental education program effectiveness. This new study will help HWI and other environmental educators build programs that truly move students along the path to environmental literacy. We are also working with the Environmental Education Association of Oregon on “No Oregon Child Left Inside” legislation in 2009 or 2011, to formalize, fund and organize statewide efforts to get kids better connected with the natural world.
Overall, we feel optimistic. Private investors and foundations have encouraged our efforts with StreamBank and HWI, providing more than $1 million in support in the first quarter of 2008 alone. Public agencies are increasingly supportive of efforts to streamline and accelerate this work. Many state and federal agencies have joined Oregon Trout in a Governor-designated Oregon Solutions process to align private and public effort on restoration efficiencies. By the end of 2008, we will have completed a larger slate of pilot projects through StreamBank, as well as the Oregon Solutions process. We will be well positioned for a 2009 public launch of StreamBank in Oregon, with the goal of expanding the effort regionally and nationally over time. We will also better understand what makes environmental education effective, arming us with the tools to improve HWI programs and support for our legislative efforts in 2009 and beyond.
The following pages list the hundreds of agencies, foundations, corporations and individual donors that make all our work possible. Our budget has increased four-fold since 2005, and our membership is up some 50% over last year—strong indications that our focus has struck a meaningful chord and that you are more interested in building the vehicles equal to the tasks ahead than simply doing more of the same. Thank you for your continued confidence in our work.
Yours in conservation,
Joe S. Whitworth
Executive Director
1 Anthony Ricciardi, Joseph B. Rasmussen (1999) “Extinction Rates of North American Freshwater Fauna,” Conservation Biology 13 (5), 1220–1222 doi:10.1046/j.1523-1739.1999.98380.x
2 “Living Planet Report 2004,” WWF—World Wildlife Fund for Nature, Gland, Switzerland, October 2004.
3 “Water Quality Conditions in the United States: A Profile from the 1998 National Water Quality Inventory Report to Congress.” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Water, Washington, D.C. (EPA 841-F-00-006) (June 2000).
4 R. Clemens, “An Investigation of the State of Outdoor Play,” Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 5, no. 1 (2004): 68-80.
5 S. L. Hooferth and J. F. Sandberg, “How American Children Spend Their Time,” Journal of Marriage and Family 63, no. 3 (2001): 295-308.
6 U.S. Census Bureau data (estimate of 1 million additional people in Oregon by 2025), see: http://www.census.gov/population/projections/state/9525rank/orprsrel.txt
7 Poff, N.L.,M.M. Brinson, J.W. Day Jr. 2002. Aquatic Ecosystems and Global Climate Change: Potential Impacts on Inland Freshwater and Coastal Wetland Ecosystems in the United States. Prepared for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, January 2002.