Why the Landscape Matters

The 4-County CWMA is made up of organizations from Clackamas, Multnomah, Washington, and Clark Counties.  These four counties boast 3,727 square miles of wildlife, natural features, and recreational opportunities, as well as cities, towns, farms and forests.  Our area includes parts of both Mt. Hood National Forest and Willamette National Forest, the beautiful Columbia River Gorge and a piece of the Cascade Range.  Numerous local parks and wildlife refuges are found here, including Metro’s Oxbow Park and Portland Parks’ Forest Park, and the Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge and Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge.

The area is also home to important watersheds that we rely on:  the Bull Run and Clackamas Rivers provide drinking water to over a million people.  Additionally, there are hundreds of miles of trails to hike and rivers to kayak, where you might find native animals such as beaver, bald eagle, elk, salmon, and bobcat, and native trees like Douglas-fir, Western redcedar, Western hemlock, and bigleaf maple.