The Willamette River Initiative's bi-annual conference, Within Our Reach, brings together more than 200 people with a stake in the river to discuss restoration efforts in the Willamette basin.
The Corvallis Gazette-Times reports on the conference, where discussion looked ahead to the end of the initiative's work, set for 2019:
Since 2008, the Meyer Memorial Trust has been pumping about $1.5 million a year into the Willamette River Initiative, an ambitious program of environmental restoration projects along the river’s mainstem and throughout the web of tributary streams that feed it.
That money has been used to leverage additional funding sources, creating a powerful multiplier effect that has fueled a massive pulse of work aimed at protecting native fish and wildlife species, restoring floodplain connections and channel complexity, and improving the overall health of the Willamette River system.
But the initiative was never intended to continue indefinitely, and now it’s nearing the end of its 10-year lifespan. In March 2019, the program’s original funding stream is scheduled to dry up.
Wanna learn more about the conference? Read the whole story at the gazettetimes.com.