In Curry County, a unique partnership combines an educational nonprofit with water-protector offices

written by James Sinks | photography by Curry Watershed Partnership

An unconventional collaboration is helping save fish, farmland and money on the South Coast.

In each Oregon county, you’ll find at least one soil and water conservation district. Overseen by locally elected boards, the nonregula-tory entities oversee projects to protect irrigation water and the farms that help feed you.

In addition, every Oregon county is home to at least one watershed council. Those councils convene scientists, industries, recreationists and others to preserve water quality and revive stream-dependent species, primarily salmon.

Yet only in one county will you find a mash-up that corrals together those somewhat obscure but similar efforts, along with a nine-year-old educational charity.

Based in Gold Beach, the Curry Watersheds Partnership combines the staff and missions of four sustainability organizations under a single roof.

By bootstrapping, they are stretching resources at a time when conservation dollars are dwindling—yet the many needs connected to coastal farmland and rivers of Southwest Oregon are not.

In addition to the Curry Soil and Water Conservation District, the partnership also includes the South Coast Watershed Council, Lower Rogue Watershed Council and the Curry Watersheds Nonprofit.

The charity is the newest of the bunch and an unconventional wrinkle that’s helping pay dividends, and bills.

Founded in 2017, the educational nonprofit helps to financially augment the other member organizations in the partnership, because it can seek money from sources the others cannot, such as tax-deductible donations from foundations, said Kelly Timchak, a wildlife biologist and the Lower Rogue Watershed Council coordinator.

The nonprofit arm also has helped ramp up community education programs, some of them unexpected. For instance, in Curry County you can attend watershed-focused trivia nights at local brew pubs.

One of the persistent challenges for conservation groups in rural places is that sustainability is oftentimes a dirty word. But years of working collaboratively with landowners—coupled with the recent boost in community education—have reduced local friction, she said.

“The biggest thing we are proud of is the relationships we have built with the communities we serve, and it’s taken a lot of trust-and reputation-building over time,” she said.

Another example of the Curry nonprofit’s educational focus can be found outside the county’s three public elementaries, where school-based gardens help students explore the interconnectivity of water, agriculture and business, she said. The crops are picked and prepped for family-focused harvest fairs, like a fresh strawberry shortcake party.

Older students venture to streams while salmon are spawning, and the nonprofit hopes to soon launch career-focused mentorship programs for high schoolers, she said.

Andrea Kreiner, executive director of the Oregon Association of Conservation Districts, said the Curry County partnership approach is unique in Oregon to help tackle funding challenges. “It seems to really be working for them” she said. “I am not sure how many districts have created nonprofits. I would venture to say very few”

The Soil and Water Conservation District in Yamhill County recently created a nonprofit to manage its properties, but it’s not a fundraising and education-bolstering organization, she said.

So what do Soil and Water Conservation Districts do, exactly?

The government-created special districts have their origins in the Dust Bowl era of almost a century ago, when devastating erosion underscored the importance of protecting long-term topsoil and water health. There are forty-five of the districts statewide and more than 3,000 of them across the country.

Today, the districts provide voluntary, technical and financial help to landowners to help improve water quality, cut weeds, protect habitats, manage urban runoff and promote sustainable agriculture.

Watershed councils, meanwhile, are an Oregon creation, and there are ninety of them across the state. They originated in the 1990s, when then-Governor John Kitzhaber championed the Oregon Salmon Plan to help induce stream habitat efforts via local collaboration.

The Curry Watershed Partnership lists a combined staff of twelve, which is an important source of paychecks in a sparsely populated county. The collective also works alongside other government agencies, including the Forest Service and National Marine Fisheries Service.

Recent partnership projects include working with timber companies to expand culverts under roads, helping farmers to cull invasive weeds and “re-meandering” streams that were previously straightened into irrigation ditches. The partnership also organizes community tree-planting events.

Timchak said she’s increasingly worried about what the future may hold insofar as funding, as conservation dollars are declining.

The partnership recently saw three federal grant applications flagged for rejection because they included the word “diversity,” when talking about plants and biodiversity. While those were ultimately approved, the amount of federal funding that’s being projected for Soil and Water Conservation District work is falling.

That may put even more pressure on the nonprofit to help fill the gaps, and on landowners to pay for projects that now are covered with grants. The charity now raises less than $1 million a year, while the other entities in the Curry partnership today receive about $2.5 million in state and federal grants, she said.

The watershed and foodshed needs will persist, even if the money doesn’t.

“We are watching funding streams dry up, and unless something changes, we are going to be in dire straits in two to three years” she said.

To learn more, visit www.currywatersheds.org