About Regenerate Cascadia

Regenerate Cascadia is a 501(c)3 nonprofit program of the Department of Bioregion and is a social movement and capacity-building organization developing a vision and framework to administer a regeneration fund for Cascadia, a bioregion located along the upper Pacific Rim of North America stretching down the continental divide from Southeast Alaska to Cape Mendocino in Northern California, traveling down the Rocky Mountains and as far east as the Yellowstone Caldera, and in the west, extending off the coast along the Cascadia Subduction Zone. 

Our mission is 

“to regenerate the Cascadia bioregion and to create the conditions for a regenerative culture and movement to thrive.”

We envision 

A 500-year plan for a regenerative future in which people live in the right relationship with the land and each other, biodiversity and ecosystem health have been restored to pre-colonial contact, and every generation has a higher quality of life than before. As part of this, we envision a Cascadia bioregion that fits into a global system in a healthy, regenerative, and ethical way 

Our goals are to:

• Regenerate our Bioregion: Co-create systemic health and well-being through practices that are in relationship with the land and each other (understanding that land is not separate from everything that is sustained by the land, including humans) Restore bio-diversity and bio-mass to pre-colonial contact levels.
• Regenerate our Borders: Break down rigid, arbitrary nation-state borders that cut across natural living systems and are not representative of people, places, or ecosystems. Allow people to organize at a whole systems scale along bioregional boundaries and frameworks of stewardship.
• Regenerate our Culture: for people to have a place-based identity, language, and context rooted in place and to know the unique contexts that make this place so special.
• Regenerate our Economy: With place-specific ways that fit into a global framework in a responsible, ethical, and regenerative way.
• Regenerate our Governance: How we come together to make healthy decisions and find where overlapping layers of stewardship frameworks can overlap and that we empower.
• Regenerate our Learning: Enable and facilitate accessible pathways for bioregional learning.

How we do this work

A central goal of Regenerate Cascadia is to grow capacity cohesively across the scales of landscapes, ecoregions, and bioregions—something that currently does not exist locally or globally—as part of a multi-generational strategy for the long-term health of the Cascadia bioregion. Regenerate Cascadia is addressing the complex challenges in funding connected landscape outcomes across a bioregion through a whole system approach that prioritizes the central role of place-based stewardship, ensures decision-making is held by those at the local level, develops trust-based networks that hold the integrity of the work; and uses a nested scale structure to facilitate information flow, representation, and learning across the whole system.

We do this through:

• Ambassadors: Every person passionate or interested in being more involved. We want to be able to provide context, understanding and onboarding so that people know what Cascadia is, the bioregion, the movement, Regenerate Cascadia and our work, and has a clear and accessible pathway to get involved, and share with family and friends.
• Landscape Hubs: Bring people together on the scale of a landscape and watershed, develop a story of place, bioregional frameworks and layers of stewardship, a portfolio of regenerative programs and projects, and create a shared vision and landscape budget.
• Bioregional Guilds: Communities of Practice that bring people together on a topic by topic basis, and create resources, skill sharing, directories, and trainings for skills that landscape hubs may need, but many people may lack. Guilds facilitate learning across landscapes.
• Projects: Ways that people are doing the work, either from a Hub or Guild, or through our fiscal sponsorship program. If people are doing regenerative work in the landscape, we are here to support it.
• Bioregional Learning Centers and Sites: Learning Centers and sites are where bioregional learning happens in a landscape. A BLC helps grow and track this for an entire landscape or watershed, while there may be many sites within a landscape where learning directly happens.
• Partnerships: And lastly, by partnering with an amazing group of hundreds of organizations throughout the Cascadia Bioregion. We both partner locally, bioregionally, and with organizations and groups across North America and the planet to empower this work, and see people supported.

The Global Vision: 

The Department of Bioregion, a 501(c)3 Organization
“A World of Interconnected Bioregions and Bioregional Movements”

Regenerate Cascadia recognizes that it is growing as one piece into an emerging global bioregional movement. Everything we can do to share and facilitate learning across bioregions will be mutually beneficial and as crucial as the work happening in our bioregion. Only together can we make the changes we need to see happen. 

Regenerate Cascadia is a program of the Department of Bioregion, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization based in North America whose mission is “a world of interconnected bioregions and bioregional movements.” The Department of Bioregion was formed in 2020 by bioregional organizers with more than 20 years of experience who wanted a space to be able to more radically challenge our existing power structures, to connect our movements with bioregionalism better, and to ask the question – outside of Cascadia, what are the other bioregions? Where are the other bioregional movements? And what can we do to connect, support, and empower our movements?

Our goal is to take the work happening with Regenerate Cascadia, create replicable templates that empower learning in bioregions around North America and the planet, and encourage the creation of a bioregional atlas and informational commons documenting this work.

You can find more information about the Department of Bioregion at https://deptofbioregion.org (under construction)

Regenerate Cascadia helps to manage programming within the Cascadia Bioregion. In contrast, the Department of Bioregion helps spread and become an interface for these templates and organizes to other bioregions worldwide. The Department of Bioregion is a Social Movement Organization and a Fiscal Sponsorship Organization that serves bioregionalism, bioregions, regeneration, and regenerators.

So what is the planet and the future you would like to see? Join with us to make that a reality.