Tillamook Acquisitions

Accomplishment: Acquisition of about 640 acres of tidal marshes and diked former tidelands in the river delta where the Wilson, Trask and Kilchis rivers enter Tillamook Bay.

Location: Just west of Tillamook (Tillamook County)

Partners: Tillamook Estuary Partnership, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, Trust for Public Land, Tillamook County, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Tillamook Pioneer Museum.

Notes: The Tillamook Estuary Partnership purchased three properties totaling more than 500 acres at the mouth of the Wilson River. A $750,000 grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Coastal Wetland Conservation Grant program helped funded the purchases. The Trust for Public Land negotiated all of the acquisitions. Tillamook County owns all three properties, which include diked pasturelands and tidal channels with floodplain forests in higher areas.. The Trust for Public Land also bought a 137-acre property at the mouth of the Kilchis River in late February 2002 with $970,000 from an anonymous donor and transferred the to the Tillamook Pioneer Museum, with deed restrictions to prevent future development on the site. The Kilchis Point property covers more than a mile of undeveloped shoreline and constitutes the last large block of forested wetland on Tillamook Bay. Tillamook Bay is one of the most important stopovers along the Oregon Coast for migrating waterfowl and shorebirds, and is used by large numbers of wintering waterfowl. The are also provides high-value habitat for threatened coho salmon, as well as chinook and chum salmon, steelhead, and cutthroat trout.

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