Bruce Taylor, director of Oregon Habitat Joint Venture, received the 2009 Excellence in Conservation Award from the Natural Resource Conservation Service for his fine work with Defenders of Wildlife, the Oregon Habitat Joint Venture, and many partners. He was honored in a ceremony in the rotunda of the Oregon State Capitol on Monday, November 2, 2009. The NRCS Excellence in Conservation Award is the highest award the agency gives to honor those outside the federal government for their work in conservation. The Conservation Registry is very proud to have Bruce as a partner.

Learn more about the Oregon Habitat Joint Venture. Visit our partner site, Pacific Coast Joint Venture.

We all agree the Registry works great and looks good—but what does it do for conservation? In Notes from the Field, users report connections and opportunities that have occurred because of their Registry participation.

For our first Notes from the Field, here’s Jeffrey Kee, Oregon Water Trust:

“I received a call from the Monument Soil and Water Conservation District manager who told me somebody from NRG, an environmental engineering company located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, had asked about the Bologna Place project. So I called them and they mentioned having a client who had since found what they were looking for, but they wanted to keep my project in their file if they had additional needs in the future. The client may have been looking for some place to mitigate for adverse impacts they were having on a project someplace else…..I was quite pleased that the Conservation Registry had gotten some of the needs I have for conservation at the Bologna Place out there and onto somebody’s radar….I sure would love it if somebody could help me turn our part time steelhead creek into full time rearing habitat with help from the best water engineers with the lowest workers comp insurance rates….beavers.

You can print that.”
– Jeffrey Kee, Project Manager, Oregon Water Trust -a program of The Freshwater Trust

If you have a story about how the Conservation Registry has helped your project, please tell your story by comment on this blog. You can also e-mail me.

Songbird nest

Teton Regional Land Trust partners with the Bureau of Land Management, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and the Living Lands Project to monitor songbirds in the South Fork of the Snake River in Idaho. A focal species of the survey is the yellow-billed cuckoo, Coccyzus americanus, which is a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act, and is seen more often in the South Fork corridor than any other area of Idaho.

Idaho Important Bird Area

The South Fork provides important habitat for a variety of water birds, raptors and songbirds. As a result of the remarkable species diversity, the South Fork corridor has been designated as an Idaho Important Bird Area. Many species of birds rely on the area’s river and wetland habitats and the large unbroken stands of cottonwood trees with open canopy forest conditions for migration stopovers and nesting sites. Presence of the yellow-billed cuckoo reflects the health and quality of the cottonwood forests.

The South Fork corridor is composed of a mosaic of public and privately owned lands. This presents a key challenge for managing contiguous songbird habitat. Increased human development in the South Fork may lead to fragmented landscapes that affects adjacent properties, even those managed for wildlife values. With fragmentation come nest predators and food generalists, like magpies and robins, who could compete with vulnerable specialist species like the cuckoo.

Songbird monitoring

Working with Partners

Teton Regional Land Trust provides a majority of the survey staff, with on the ground assistance from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and the Bureau of Land Management. The Living Lands Project contributed a $5,000 grant toward this monitoring effort that is helping to fund the project. Surveys in past years have documented yellow-billed cuckoo breeding in the South Fork corridor. Although no yellow-billed cuckoos have been observed during the last two seasons, survey staff has documented species richness and diversity among bird species. A few of the songbirds that breed along the South Fork include the yellow warbler, MacGillivray’s warbler, dusky flycatcher and willow flycatcher.

Using the Conservation Registry

Wray Landon, Resource Specialist with the Teton Regional Land Trust, writes: “The mission of the Teton Regional Land Trust is to conserve agricultural and natural lands and to encourage land stewardship in the Upper Snake River Watershed for the benefit of today’s communities and as a legacy for future generations. The Conservation Registry has helped to facilitate our mission by providing an outreach tool to help us promote the work we do.”

Staff and volunteers plan to be out there again next year looking for the cuckoo and the other wonders of this beautiful, vibrant habitat.

View project detail page

Defenders of Wildlife and CleanWater Services teamed up with the northwest and national associations of zoos and aquariums and Three Rivers Land Conservancy to launch the first project of the Marketplace for Nature. The project is Bronson Creek, a charming little forested site with a creek, nestled in between densely developed subdivisions and a large regional park outside of Portland, Oregon. The site is privately owned, but some riparian restoration has been done by Clean Water Services to help reduce water temperature. A conservation easement on the property is held by Three Rivers Land Conservancy. Attendees at the national conference of zoos and aquariums were offered the option of helping to ‘offset” the ecological footprint of the conference by contributing to the restoration of Bronson Creek. The site provides several ecosystem services including carbon sequestration, water quality, and wildlife habitat. Over 20 percent of the registrants contributed, raised about $2300, and offset about 15 percent of the carbon emissions associated with travel to the conference. The Registry will soon have a special Marketplace for Nature portal for projects that have ecosystem service credits for sale. In the meantime, check out the Bronson Creek project. Next year, the zoo and aquarium conference will be in Houston, Texas where sponsors will try to increase the level of participation in the program to outclass Oregon.

Cheers, Sara

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife–a Registry partner from the beginning–mentions the Registry in their current e-newsletter. Read it here. The mighty Oregon Explorer, home of all things mappable in Oregon, has also picked up this story. Thanks, guys!

While you’re on the ODFW website, check out Bats For Everyone, a bat workshop at the Oregon Zoo on November 3rd. Everyone loves bats–especially this time of year.

How many bat conservation projects are in the Registry? Do a text search and find out. Have a bat project you’d like to report? Enter it in the Conservation Registry.

Gina has a new poll. Vote once, vote often!