Land stewardship as an entry point to civic participation

2025 Civic Hub grantee

High Desert Partnership (HDP) brings people together to find common ground in addressing rural challenges and opportunities across Harney County, Oregon. HDP serves a diverse community of organizations, agencies, individuals and a Tribal nation, who all share a passion for helping Harney County thrive.

Rural southeast Oregon faces multiple complex challenges: restoring forests and wetlands, mitigating wildfire, creating opportunities for youth, and growing an economy. Rather than tackle these issues in isolation, HDP uses a community-driven collaborative model. Community partners identify the issues and opportunities, while HDP provides the support and resources making it possible for common ground solutions to be found.

HDP supports six collaboratives: Harney County Forest Restoration Collaborative, Harney County Wildfire Collaborative, Harney Basin Wetlands Collaborative, Malheur National Wildlife Refuge Comprehensive Conservation Plan, Biz Harney Opportunity Collaborative and Youth Changing the Community Collaborative. These partnerships are building solutions that balance land stewardship and community resilience in Oregon’s high desert.

“High Desert Partnership and its collaboratives make it possible to realize we share the same goals—it’s how we get there that disputes arrive. Now we have a way to talk through those disputes and move forward together.”

– Dan Nichols, Board Member and Rancher
High Desert Partnership (2025 Civic Hub grantee)

The group expects to use its Civic Hub funding to add capacity to a project that will bring community members together to address critical groundwater issues facing the Harney Basin, as well as the development of an Eastern Oregon Collaborative Center that will expand collaboration throughout the region.

Learn more at www.highdesertpartnership.org/