Community-Based Natural Resource Management: Ideals and Realities for Oregon Watershed Councils

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) is presented as an alternative to conventional, top-down approaches to natural resource governance. It entails local, place-based projects, programs, and policies that have the goal of advancing healthy environments and human communities. CBNRM promises Jeffersonian ideals of civil society—local citizens participating in democratic decision making to create and maintain robust communities. Implementing CBNRM requires different institutions and organizational structures than those created during the rise of the administrative state. Watershed councils are a particularly pertinent example of CBNRM in practice. What are the issues facing watershed councils in a policy environment that places significant expectations and responsibilities on such entities? Drawing from a larger study of Oregon's watershed councils, this article explores some of the institutional and organizational realities of watershed councils in the current policy environment.