Copper River Watershed Project

1. Increase public awareness and stewardship of watershed health.
2. Become the primary facilitator and information source for Copper River watershed-related issues.
3. Perpetuate the physical health of the Copper River watershed.
4. Increase organizational capacity, visibility, and credibility.

Goal 1: expand watershed education, develop Traveling by Story Through Copper River Country, facilitate Copper River WILD! Salmon Festival, and develop pilot renewable energy project.
Goal 2: Develop and implement communications strategy, address data gaps among fisheries users by holding workshops.
Goal 3: implement invasive weeds program, use culvert prioritization mapper tool to rank culverts in Copper River watershed for replacement priority, pursue replacement funding; develop In Lieu Fee wetlands program, implement Salmon Blitz stream surveys.
Goal 4: increase major donor giving program, develop evaluation systems for board and programs, develop outreach strategy with focus on increasing CRWP profile locally.

As a non-profit engaged in community planning, the nature of the Copper River Watershed Project’s work is collaborative by definition. In 2011, we were awarded the Public Lands Foundation’s (PLF) Landscape Stewardship Award, the first time an Alaska NGO was so recognized. The PLF looks for organizations that “demonstrated sustained outstanding leadership, vision, and purpose in contributing to BLM’s efforts and in motivating other citizens and institutions to work together to more effectively manage whole landscapes, including watersheds, planning or management units, and other land systems upon which people share a common interest” (http://www.publicland.org/).

Our mission is to assist residents of the Copper River watershed in diversifying the region's economy while sustaining its resource base and its cultural heritage. Founded in 1998, we have worked since then to make collaboration our signature approach, focusing on what our far-flung communities have in common rather than our differences. Preserving and promoting the area's cultural heritage has been a successful strategy for working together to increase local participation in community development projects and to help local businesses benefit from tourism. From our experience coordinating fish habitat restoration projects with landowners and permitting agencies, the Copper River WILD! Salmon Festival to celebrate our culture of salmon, and facilitating dialogue among Copper Basin educators and community groups to create roadside interpretive signs, the CRWP has extensive practice with drawing diverse partners together to capitalize on their respective expertise and resources.

Our main programs are fish habitat restoration, watershed education, tourism resource development, and invasive weeds control and eradication. We have been focusing on culvert replacement and Salmon Blitz identification of salmon streams to help preserve stocks of wild Alaska salmon in the past few years. Our watershed education programs reach K - 12 students all across the Copper River watershed, throughout the year. We help coordinate an annual Copper River WILD! Salmon Festival to help grow the region's small-scale tourism industry, and we manage invasive weeds programs in the Cordova area and in the upriver Copper River basin.