Photo: Community meeting participants rank their top well-being indicators.

ODFW is building a long-term plan to better understand how people use, relate to, and value the marine reserves. This will help us continue to assess the positive and negative effects of marine reserves on coastal communities over time. To support the development of this plan, ODFW partnered with graduate students from the University of California Davis (UC Davis) Environmental Policy and Management Program to host community meetings near each of the five marine reserves throughout April 2025. Amanda Gannon, ODFW Sea Grant Natural Resource Policy Fellow and Adaptive Management Coordinator, and Dr. Sarah Klain, the ODFW Marine Reserves Human Dimensions Project Leader at the time, organized meetings near the reserves in Lincoln City, Nehalem, Otter Rock, Yachats, and Port Orford. Over 80 people including commercial and recreational fishermen, business owners, members of conservation organizations, coastal residents, and others shared their thoughts on human-focused indicators that can help answer the question “how do Oregon’s marine reserves impact your well-being?

Sarah Klain opened the meetings with a brief background of Oregon’s marine reserves. She shared details about the program’s unique, rich history of social science monitoring to understand how people are impacted by the reserves. Over the years, this monitoring has included data about awareness, knowledge, and support of the marine reserves in addition to 145 other topics. The UC Davis team led participants through a guided brainstorming exercise to home in on key areas of connection between the marine reserves and communities that are practical to measure regularly. Participants worked in small groups to identify potential indicators connected to multiple facets of well-being including knowledge, economy, health, and culture among others.  Following these group discussions, participants were given 20 stickers to vote on their preferred indicators. The UC Davis team recorded all suggested indicators and brought the top-ranked indicators back to the group for a debrief discussion.

Back in California, the UC Davis team synthesized the feedback received from the five community meetings and provided ODFW with a report of recommended indicators (read the report here). The ODFW Marine Reserves team will use these recommendations to draft a subset of indicators and measurement methods that will be shared with communities and ocean users for comment. Following a public review process, ODFW will finalize and implement the community-informed monitoring protocol. Stay tuned for next steps and other opportunities to get involved by signing up for our eNewsletter and meetings and announcements email list here.