Historical Changes in Habitat and Hydrology
in the Lower Willamette: Implications for Restoring the River

Tuesday, October 16

Noon to 1 pm

Portland Building Auditorium

1120 SW Fifth

Documenting historical conditions is a critical step in restoring a river. While future habitats will never be restored fully to the quality of those from centuries past, knowing a river’s natural tendencies—and understanding the types and scale of lost habitat functions—is vital to saving or re-growing smaller, more managed habitats that still deliver valuable ecological function.

Restoring a river running through an urban area like Portland is not an attempt to create the best habitat in the Columbia Basin—but Portland’s habitats need to improve until they provide a gateway, not a barrier; and a passageway, not a bottleneck. Our area cannot be the basin's most degraded habitat at one of its must critical landscape junctures.

Reducing the severity of limiting factors and improving local habitats and the landscape linkages they provide to regional fish and wildlife will be Portland's greatest contribution to regional recovery efforts.

Join Chris Prescott from Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services as he describes how our understanding of key changes in the Lower Willamette’s habitat and hydrology is informing restoration in this ecologically unique and economically vital stretch of the river.

For more river-related news and information, visit www.portlandonline.com/river.