Happy Holidays from the Long Tom!
Please consider giving a generous tax-deductible gift to LTWC this holiday season.
In her book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, Potawatomi botanist, and author Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, “We need acts of restoration, not only for polluted waters and degraded lands, but also for our relationship to the world.”
Restoration and relationship. That is what the work of the Long Tom Watershed Council is about. That is why our dedicated staff travel our community to join landowners in walking over hills and along creeks and sitting in barns and under trees in dialogue for hours and hours, building bonds of trust and co-creating plans to transform our shared landscapes and waterways towards the better: Restoration and relationship.
Relationship with each other. Relationship to the world. Bonds of trust. Right here in the ancestral lands of the Kalapuya. Ninety percent of the land in our watershed is privately owned. We work with an endless array of landowners, rural and urban, who care deeply about the land they steward. We offer practical solutions for restoring their lands and the waterways we share. 
The results of these bonds—fostered by the Council for the better part of three decades now—can be seen virtually everywhere throughout the watershed: In the nearly one million native trees we have planted in our rural lands and cities. In the restoration of 1,200 acres of upland habitat. We see the results in the beavers making new homes in the analogue dams and log jams we recently created near the headwaters of the Long Tom River. We see it in the rain gardens we installed this year that cleanse the storm waters from the parking lot at Willamette Christian Center, and more than 100 other acres of rain gardens we have installed in Eugene and Springfield. We see it in the hundreds of acres of oak and prairie habitat we have successfully treated with ecological burns.
There is an intrinsic joy woven into the patterns of this work. Even if the context of these efforts is overshadowed by the reality of this century’s challenges and the legacies of species displacement and extinction, this hard work is powered and bound by an intrinsic joy.
So, we do not despair the damages left on this land and upon the people who cared for it before. We work to repair it. We persevere. In community. In joy. There is something our staff and colleagues know from our work: The land and our animal kinfolk heal us.
I dare say that is what motivates our staff and the neighbors who allow us onto their properties to explore and seek to partner with them in making whole what time and humanity have damaged. We seek to repair relationships to the land and water, and in so doing, though we do not often speak of it publicly, we repair ourselves. Our work is, in the end, about fortifying bonds of community and bonds to the Earth.
All told, our staff have envisioned, shepherded, collaborated, designed, and completed more than 200 long-term projects of restoration in our community. Right here where we live, we are unbinding ourselves from the patterns of the past and building a foundation for resilience with the land and each other. The Long Tom Watershed Council has brought in $20 million in grant funding for restoration projects here. Only a small portion of those funds actually goes to sustaining our work. The rest goes into the watershed.
So, we ask you to invest in our work, in our community. Invest in the power of healing and regeneration here in the home we share at this unprecedented time in human history. Invest in these joyful endeavors and their results. Invest in the profound relevance of these efforts to the life of our community. Invest in programs that are admired, respected, and replicated throughout our state.
Please become a major donor with a generous gift of $500 or $1,000. That would make a real difference to the basic capacity of our organization. Your gift of $100, $250, $500, $1,000 or more is crucial because a gift at any level contributes to the foundation of our work and its future. Consider making your gift monthly.
The benefit of your gift to the Council goes beyond what is here for us to enjoy today; your gift is a legacy for future generations who deserve a healthy productive environment in which to live, work, and play.
Thank you for being a part of this work of restoration and resilience. As we begin a new year, may you and all of us share joy with loved ones and neighbors.
Sincerely,
Steve Dear
Executive Director and Watershed Coordinator