Watershed council to host event aimed at landowner partnerships, resources
Logs lay strewn among seagrass in Necanicum Estuary Natural History Park in Seaside.
The Necanicum Watershed Council is inviting residents and private landowners to learn more about natural resource conservation at a first-of-its-kind event this Saturday.
The event — which will bring environmental nonprofits and agencies from across the community together in one room — is part of the watershed council's Necanicum Together campaign, an effort supported by a grant from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board aimed at building partnerships with private landowners. As part of the program, the nonprofit has engaged in landowner outreach, and in September it hosted a 'get to know your watershed council' event.
'At that meeting, we heard a wide variety of concerns, so everything from erosion to invasive weeds,' said Operations Director Sarah Walker. 'As a watershed council, there are only so many things that we can do, and so it seemed like the next step was to try and get all of those resources into one room for landowners.'
That's exactly the goal of Saturday's event.
Walker said residents will have the opportunity to learn from different agencies at information tables, engage in a question and answer session and hear from speakers from the Necanicum Watershed Council, North Coast Watershed Association and Tillamook Estuaries Partnership. Other participants include the Clatsop Soil and Water District, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, North Coast Land Conservancy, Clatsop County OSU Extension Services and Master Gardener Association, PNW Native Landscapes and the Chinook Indian Nation.
'Ideally what we'd hoped for is that people leave with a roster of contacts of who they call when they need to call them,' she said.
Much of the land in the Necanicum Basin is owned by Nuveen Natural Capital – an entity that the watershed council already has a strong working relationship with for restoration projects, Walker said. As the nonprofit continues its efforts with Necanicum Together, however, she said the hope is to bring other individual landowners into the conversation, too.
'Connecting with those folks not only lets us ID like, 'Oh, this is a great place for river restoration, and we can come onto your private property and help,' but also, our regular outreach and education messages about how to protect the watershed, that really should be digestible to most everybody that lives here,' she said.
The event is from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Bob Chisholm Community Center in Seaside. People can RSVP at necanicumwatershed.org/events.
'We're just excited to try it out and see if it's helpful for the folks that come, and then also helpful for all of the organizations that are working in the same place, essentially, with the same goal,' Walker said.
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