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Land trusts urge OWEB to avoid locking restoration expectations into acquisition grants
Summary
Speakers from several Oregon land trusts told the OWEB acquisition committee that requiring detailed restoration plans or penalties before title is secured creates barriers to conservation acquisitions and urged staff to use existing ecological-priority tools and adaptive management instead.
Several conservation groups urged the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board’s Acquisition, Restoration and Emerging Issues Committee to avoid tying grant awards to fixed restoration outcomes before organizations have legal title to properties.
Joe Buettifuco, executive director of the Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts, told the committee that accredited land trusts "have expertise to bring good projects and deliver results" and warned that current expectations can "lock desired future conditions into grant funding and hold land trusts to achieving those conditions on a property before they even own it." He urged flexibility in timelines to account for planning, negotiations and funding uncertainties. Natasha Bellas of Deschutes Land Trust asked the committee to better integrate the agency’s Ecological Priorities for Land Acquisition by Basin into application review so that restoration is used as an informed management tool rather than an automatic gating criterion. Jessica McDonald of Greenbelt Land Trust said OWEB should re‑examine a historical tendency to restrict public access where appropriate and consider cultural and recreational access as compatible with conservation.
OWEB staff responded that restoration requirements are currently used in a small subset of cases. Miriam Forney, OWEB’s land acquisition coordinator, said the agency has required a formal "description of restored conditions" in conservation easements for highly altered properties and that such formal restoration commitments have been used in roughly a dozen of the program’s roughly 120 funded projects. Staff emphasized existing options such as interim management plans, five‑year management plan increments and project‑specific funding conditions to manage risk while supporting adaptive approaches. The committee directed staff to draft clearer recommendations and to pursue partner engagement on program refinements.
