Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife
$40,000  Blue Mountains   Coast Range   Columbia Plateau   East Cascades   Klamath Mountains   Nearshore   Northern Basin & Range   Willamette Valley   West Cascades 

The Oregon Conservation Strategy (OCS) is used extensively to guide and direct implementation of conservation work statewide. Ensuring that resources provided within the OCS are current and accurate is foundational to its utility as a resource to partners and practitioners. The OCS first established Strategy Habitats, defined as habitats determined to be of particular importance to sensitive species and/or of high conservation value, in 2006. ODFW is currently revising the OCS, to be published in 2026, and understands that recent habitat trends must be identified to evaluate the effectiveness of conservation under the OCS to-date and plan for future conservation implementation.

While maps are available describing the extent of habitat types in Oregon within the last 10 years, a comprehensive assessment of status and trends of these habitat types at the statewide scale has not been conducted in approximately 25 years. However, over the last 25 years there have been dramatic changes to habitats across the state including both positive and negative changes driven by policy, focused restoration investments, high severity forest fires, drought, climate change, development, and invasive species. The resulting data gap has a substantial impact on conservation efforts.

For the 2026 revision of the OCS it is timely to consider changes that occurred on the landscape for the last 25 years. Characterization of the magnitude of change of these habitat types is needed to understand the threats and current status of habitats as they pertain to Strategy Species, Strategy Habitats, and Conservation Opportunity Areas (COAs). This proposal seeks to update available resources with information from the most current vegetation maps available to demonstrate change in habitat types. The products resulting from this effort will have broad reaching impacts to support effective conservation work statewide and will be beneficial to all projects guided by the OCS after 2026.

Project Report