Regenerate Cascadia is the bioregional organization working at the landscape and watershed scale across Cascadia, the region that stretches along the Pacific Rim from Southeast Alaska through British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and into northern California. Founded in April 2023 by Brandon Letsinger and Clare Attwell, its founding vision won the 2023 Salmon Nation Edge Prize for Innovation in Systems and Governance. The organization operates at regeneratecascadia.org.
Regenerate Cascadia describes its mission as regenerating the Cascadia bioregion and cultivating the conditions for a regenerative movement to thrive. The approach is place-based and watershed-rooted. Rather than scaling a single program top down, the work builds the social infrastructure that lets people organize at the scale where they actually live: the landscape, the foodshed, the watershed, the island, the river valley.
The work
Regenerate Cascadia organizes its work along several active lines:
- Landscape Groups. Local teams across the bioregion organizing the social infrastructure, mapping, and coalitions to steward their home landscapes. Active groups include the Duwamish River Valley, Fraser Lowland, the Gorge, Greater Victoria, Vashon Island, Skagit, South Willamette Valley, Whatcom, and Whidbey Island.
- Landscape Hub Cultivator. A pilot cohort supporting landscape groups through bioregional mapping, relationship building, and funded regeneration pilots.
- Cascadia BioFi. The financial infrastructure initiative for flowing resources into landscape regeneration at bioregional scale.
- Cascadia Learning Journey. A six month bioregional cohort, currently themed Regenerating Earth Through Collapse, run in partnership with the Design School for Regenerating Earth.
- Regional gatherings and convenings. Online summits, monthly community calls, and in person gatherings that build shared bioregional identity and coordination across the network.
Relationship to the Department of Bioregion
Regenerate Cascadia and the Department of Bioregion are sister efforts in close fellowship, working at different scales within a shared regenerative movement. Regenerate Cascadia is anchored in the Cascadia bioregion specifically, organizing the landscapes, watersheds, and communities of this place. The Department of Bioregion, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in 2019 and operating under that name from 2026, extends shared bioregional infrastructure to projects across Turtle Island and beyond. Regenerate Cascadia operates as a program under the DOB nonprofit umbrella, which is what allows it to focus its attention on Cascadia while drawing on continental administrative, legal, and fiscal support.
In practice, Cascadia is the founding case for the model. The structures tested here, the templates, agreements, learning materials, and coordination practices, are what other bioregional teams elsewhere now use as a starting point for organizing in their own watersheds.
A Cascadian lineage
Regenerate Cascadia is the most recent expression of more than thirty years of bioregional organizing in this place. That lineage runs through the Cascadian Bioregional Congresses of the 1980s, the Cascadia Institute under David McCloskey, the Cascadia Bioregion organization, and CascadiaNow!, alongside countless watershed councils, tribal nations, land trusts, and community efforts that have held the bioregional vision across decades. Regenerate Cascadia carries that work forward into a moment when the bioregional frame is broadly needed.
For programs, landscape groups, events, and ways to participate in regenerative work across the Cascadia bioregion, visit regeneratecascadia.org.