Grassland habitats, including meadows and pastures used for livestock grazing as well as remnant native prairies, are found across western Oregon from coastal terraces and headlands to the inland valleys. Seasonally wet pastures along the coast and the lower Columbia River and in the Willamette Valley are heavily used by migrating and wintering waterfowl and shorebirds. Remnant native prairies in the interior valleys provide breeding habitat for a suite of grassland birds that include some of the region’s most imperiled species.

• Priority species associated with grassland habitat: western meadowlark, streaked horned lark, grasshopper sparrow, and Oregon vesper sparrow.
• Flooded pastures in the Coquille Valley harbor the largest concentrations of wintering waterfowl on the Oregon coast, especially dabbling ducks.
• More than 80,000 Aleutian cackling geese stage in the New River bottomlands during spring migration; more than 100,000 western sandpipers and 2,000 whimbrels were recorded in one day on a single ranch in this area.
• Tens of thousands of Canada geese forage in pastures along the lower Columbia throughout the winter. In the Willamette Valley, unimproved pastures support remnant populations of western meadowlarks and other grassland birds.

Present status: Native grassland habitats have declined dramatically from historic levels, with declines ranging from 50 to 98 percent for most types. These losses are primarily a result of conversion to cropland and urban development, although fire suppression has also allowed expansion of forests into some grasslands as well. Current estimates of native grassland and savanna habitat are less than one percent of the historic extent in the Willamette Valley. Many of the Willamette Valley’s remnant native grasslands are protected on national wildlife refuges and other conservation lands. Restoration efforts have begun in a number of areas; limited results to date suggest that re-establishment of diverse native plant communities will be difficult and expensive.

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