Oregon has always been an innovative state. Once again, state public and private sectors are pursuing a pioneering approach to caring for its natural resources and its communities based on the services that healthy ecosystems provide. Ecosystem services are the benefits people get from nature: goods such as timber, agricultural products, and fossil fuels and minerals; and services such as water and air filtration, pollination, flood control and cultural and aesthetic uses. Until recently, nature's services did not have monetary values, but that is changing. Marketplaces-buyers, sellers, and ways for them to perform transactions-for ecosystem services are emerging in multiple forms. The ecosystem services marketplace can provide revenue to landowners for restoration and stewardship which in turn helps the populations that depend on those ecosystems.

• Read Money in a Streambank: tells the story of a regulation-driven project
• Read VIP Treatment: Rewarding Landowners for Riparian Stewardship: tells the story of a voluntary program.

Atlas of Conservation Values

Bureau of Land Management lands in Western Oregon play a critical role in providing multiple ecological, economic, and cultural values for local communities, the state, and the nation. The Nature Conservancy and Wild Salmon Center produced the “Atlas of Conservation Values on Bureau of Land Management Holdings in Western Oregon” to provide an overview of these values and created a geodatabase from their findings. Learn about the Atlas of Conservation Values