The Willapa Watershed is located in southwestern Washington state North of the mouth of the Columbia River. The estuary and the forested uplands form the most productive coastal ecosystems remaining in the continental United States. One of every six oysters consumed in the 
United States grow on Willapa's tideflats. Pacific salmon, Dungeness crab, and several species of clams also abound in the bay. Nowhere in the Northwest do conifers grow faster, and cranberry bogs, cattle ranches, and dairy farms attest to the land's fertility.
Including the bay, the Willapa ecosystem encompasses some 680,000 acres, about the size of Rhode Island. Its forests of Douglas-fir, western hemlock, western redcedar and Sitka spruce once held some of the most massive trees encountered anywhere in the world. Its tidal flats make up a quarter of the productive shellfish-growing waters of the western United States. Its eelgrass beds and marshlands provide critical habitat for seventy species of migratory birds. Willapa's 19,000 year-round human residents depend on livelihoods rooted in the productive abundance of its lands and waters. Nearly two-thirds of the land in the Willapa Bay Watershed is commercial forestland. Farms and irrigated lands together make up another seven percent, including the 1,400 acres of cranberry bogs. Oysters are cultivated on nearly 10,000 acres of privately owned or leased tidelands, and three species of Pacific salmon that return to spawn in Willapa's streams are caught by commercial fishers in the open water of the bay.
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