The Oregon spotted frog highlights where the Habitat Conservation Plan falls short.

The Northern spotted owl may be the most controversial animal in the Pacific Northwest. The owl was pushed into the national spotlight in the early 1990s…

A recent guest column author argued that the solution for water shortages in the Deschutes River Basin is large canal piping projects for irrigation districts funded by the public, instead of much cheaper water market solutions. What he completely ignores is the cost of the large pipes, around $1 billion. In this economic crisis that is absurd. It will cost too much and take too long. Climate change, threatened fish and wildlife, degraded rivers and farmers without water security compel us to act quickly to solve this problem.

Central Oregon Irrigation District’s (COID) latest watershed plan would pipe only 7.9 miles of the more than 400 miles of its canals and cost a whopping $568,000 per irrigator. The cost would be more than four times the price of conserved water generated by other similar piping projects in COID in recent years.

We worked closely with and directly supported the efforts of the community movement 30/30 for the Deschutes to advocate for a healthy river. Overall, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service received more than 1,700 comments from the public asking them to assure that an improved plan for the Deschutes River is developed!
 

We are grateful to announce that this year, the Brainerd Foundation will generously match your year-end gift up to $35,000 to help keep Oregon lovable, and make it even more livable.

Join us for Pint Night at Worthy Brewing tomorrow, December 3rd! One dollar from every pint sold after 4pm goes directly back to LandWatch so that we can fight to protect what we all love most about Central Oregon.

Central Oregon LandWatch will be submitting substantial comments on the HCP's inadequacies and how it could be improved. In addition to Rivers Conservation Director Tod’s Heisler’s 15 years of experience with this basin, we have a team of experts commenting on on various aspects of the plan, including: hydrologists, water managers, wildlife specialists, and attorneys.

On Tuesday, Tod Heisler spoke with an impassioned crowd of more than 80 river advocates who attended our event, Last Chance for the Deschutes, at Worthy Brewing. He reflected on the dire state of the river and discussed real solutions that have been omitted from the irrigation district's proposed Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP).

Join LandWatch at Worthy Brewing to hear from Tod Heisler, our Rivers Conservation Program Director, to learn about the threats to the Deschutes River Basin, the "solutions" proposed by the irrigation districts, and what we can all do to preserve the River for the next 30 years and beyond.

The biggest decision-point in our lifetimes for the future of the Deschutes River Basin was triggered last week when irrigation districts submitted a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Suffice to say, the plan put forth by the irrigation districts does not sufficiently address the scale of the River’s problem.

The time has come to put real collaborative and effective water conservation approaches to work. Otherwise, threatened fish and wildlife in the Deschutes basin will be blamed for our water woes when the solution to the problem has been in the hands of the irrigators all along.

Hardly a day goes by without an article in the paper or our online news feeds about drought, declining snowpack, climate change and threats to water supply. Despite this continuous stream of information and the obvious fact that water is one of our most precious resources, we continue to waste enormous quantities of it.

To assure that the Deschutes River is well-represented in future policy deliberations and decision-making, we are proud to announce that the former Executive Director of the Deschutes River Conservancy, Tod Heisler, will join our staff to run our Rivers Conservation Program .

Central Oregon LandWatch is the only group on the front lines in defense of Deschutes County’s wildlife habitat code protections. Last week, we filed an appeal of an alarming change to the county’s Flood Plain Zone to the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals.