OREGON SHORES CONSERVATION COALITION

For more than 50 years, Oregon Shores has served as the state’s leading voice when it comes to protecting the beaches, headlands, landscapes, and ecosystems that make Oregon’s coast so spectacular and loved. As a regional organization, Oregon Shores works throughout the Oregon coastal region on the full range of conservation issues: land use, water quality, shoreline management, marine conservation, endangered species, forest and mining practices, and other community concerns that citizens bring to us. Oregon Shores' mission is to protect the public interest in the long-term, sustainable management of our coastal resources, ecosystems and habitats, with a special focus on protecting Oregon's public shoreline and public access thereto. In our work, ecology and recreation go hand-in-hand.

Founded as a watchdog group to protect Oregon’s public beaches by veterans of the campaign to pass Oregon's pioneering Beach Bill, Oregon Shores has expanded to encompass education, outreach, and conservation priorities, including: estuaries, nearshore ocean, shoreline management and land use, and climate resilience. We have a long track record of success in land use and water quality cases; many of the coast's most beautiful and ecologically important places remain protected due to Oregon Shores' work. Our Nearshore Ocean work played a key role in the campaign to create marine reserves in Oregon waters. CoastWatch is the only program in the nation through which the citizens of a state have adopted their entire coastline for monitoring and stewardship; reports by CoastWatch “mile adopters” inform not only Oregon Shores, but resource agencies, scientists, local governments and coastal citizens. Through CoastWatch we organize community science projects, which bring a higher level of rigor to our volunteers' observations and produce useful data. CoastWatch in the Schools, an ancillary program that links schools in Oregon’s 7 coastal counties to a shoreline mile, increases STEAM learning, environmental literacy, & marine stewardship of future generations.