Environment Oregon joins the conservation chorus asking for more for our Marine Reserves

This week, Environment Oregon joined over twenty conservation-minded scientists, organizations, and local business owners in submitting a letter to the Oregon legislature asking them to support House Bill 2903 (HB2903). This bill would allocate an additional $800,000 to support Oregon’s incredible coastal environments and the Marine Reserves Program.

Within our territorial sea, the five Reserves at Otter Rock, Redfish Rocks, Cascade Head, Cape Perpetua, and Cape Falcon encompass roughly 9% of our states waters. In that area is a wide array of amazing ecosystems like rocky reefs, sprawling seagrass meadows, thick kelp forests, and vast sandy bottoms.

The Marine Reserves Program has conserved these areas and the animals – like octopus, rockfish, seals, and Dungeness crab – that inhabit them, as well as engaged and educated ocean-curious Oregonians about the wonders beneath the waves just offshore.

Passing HB2903 would create a stronger, more effective Program equipped with opportunities for more research and education. Were our legislators to do so, they will have worked to secure a thriving nearshore environment for the foreseeable future, as well as invested Oregon in the important work of ocean conservation.

You can read the letter, and more about the Program, here.