The Willamette and McKenzie rivers flow through the valley between the Coast Mountains and the Cascades.
The South Willamette Valley is a sub-section of the broader Willamette Valley ecosystem, which is in turn part of the larger Cascadian Bioregion.
Nestled between the coastal and Cascade mountain ranges, the Willamette River Valley was shaped by the Missoula Floods, tectonic plates, and has a rich natural and cultural history dating back beyond the presence of diverse First Nations groups 15,000 years ago. Largely inhabited by Kalapuyan peoples the Whilamut Valley, prior to colonization and dispossession, offered fertile ground and a relative abundance of large camas-filled oak prairies and rivers with beaver and salmon, and wet lands packed with wapato. This ecosystem provided a relatively stable go-between from coastal ocean abundance and the great abundance of the plains more central to the continent. For thousands of years, this Valley has offered stability and abundance to its inhabitants, although not without reciprocal tending. It is clear that the First Nations heavily tended to these relationships with the flora and fauna in this region through fire and other cultural practices to nurture the ongoing sustainability of these lands.
In our modern day, the landscape has dramatically changed through colonial domination, the enclosing of the commons, and the broad-scale destruction of ecosystems in the pursuit of profit and domination. Now more than ever it is important how we steward these lands in a global context of climate weirding. The unique features of this valley offer the possibility of an oasis in a sea of ecological systems’ collapse. Temperate Mediterranean climate and rich soils brought in from the Missoula floods, paired with enormous underground aquifers buried in the Cascade Mountain Range and a huge array of biodiverse ecosystems, paint a unique picture of resilience in a time of great instability. However, the health of this very special eco-region depends upon its human stewards and our shared cultural responsibility to this valley we call home.
Sixty-four percent of the watershed is privately owned, while 36 percent is publicly owned.[36] The U.S. Forest Service manages 30 percent of the watershed, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management 5 percent, and the State of Oregon 1 percent.[36] Sixty-eight percent of the watershed is forested; agriculture, concentrated in the Willamette Valley, makes up 19 percent, and urban areas cover 5 percent.[36] More than 81,000 miles (130,000 km) of roads criss-cross the watershed.[36] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willamette_River
Most photos were taken during the 2025 Listening tour of the Willamette Valley for a thorough write up of that journey.
Our landscape is vulnerable to resource extraction industries. Habitat destruction impacts Beaver, Salmon and Humans and many more species.
Timber and related pesticide spraying and fire management
Farmland to agribusiness and grass seed industry
Water is our main source of electricity and fertility
Any amount of landscape regeneration –soil, forest, and water conservation efforts –will be temporary if the extractive economy is not shifted to an economy based on the wellbeing of all life in our landscape.
Therefore, we see building a local economy based on regenerative practices, protecting our natural resources and people, as central to a sustainable regenerative landscape.
We believe that developing local economies can help bridge the urban/rural political divides. In communities currently dominated by fast food jobs and extractive industries, there is tremendous potential for work in forest and wetlands remediation, for innovation in materials development based on a circular economy, for serving the basic needs of food, housing, education and health care.
This work, especially if it is organized as cooperatives, restores a sense of purpose and civic empowerment to communities to be the stewards of their landscapes and futures.
The SWV steward team is held by three anchor local institutions: Lost Valley Education Center, PROUT Institute, and the Center for Rural Livelihoods. These have deep roots in the community and branch out with many partnerships.
Collaboration started with the 2024 Activation Tour for Regenerate Cascadia. Since then we have held events to bring other stakeholders into the conversation, including a September 2025 Listening Tour of projects in the region. Our work together has brought us to four powerful branches of possibilities.
Cottage Grove Integrated community development led by Center for Rural Livelihoods
Food Sector integration and development led by partners at Hummingbird Wholesale
Eco-builders Guild Cooperative
Bioregional Regeneration Learning Network led by Lost Valley Education Center.
Kelson Gorman
Kelson is a local community activist focused on planting the seeds for new systems of alternative economics and food sovereignty that can support a future that sustains all life and diverse human and more-than-human relations for future generations. Kelson lives and works at Lost Valley Education Center as an educator researcher and manager of the farms/gardens on site. He has a degree in sociology and philosophy from the University of Oregon as well as a strong foundation in Central and Latin American Indigenous movements.
He brings experience in facilitation, models of community governance, alternative systems of economics, and agroecological food sovereignty movements. In his organizing role with Regenerate Cascadia, he stands in solidarity with the Cascadian bioregional and global agroecological movements advocating for just, sustainable food systems that prioritize the well-being of local communities and their ecological context over profit.
Clare Strawn
For the past decade, Clare has been involved in systems shift activism from the neighborhood organization level to regional organizing of the New Era convergence. She also started Cooperation Eugene and followed the international solidarity economy movement. In the past two years, she has actively contributed to the Regenerate Cascadia movement. As a “Social Sculptor,” Clare connects the dots, with insight from PROUT philosophy, toward an integrative movement for systems transformation. She also draws on 50 years of community organizing, practitioner knowledge of systems design and change processes, and academic studies (PhD in Urban Studies).
Kendall Runyan
Kendall is a systems-minded organizer supporting regenerative culture and bioregional collaboration in the Southern Willamette Valley. She brings experience in dynamic governance, ecological education, and nonprofit administration through her role at Lost Valley Education Center, where she helps steward transformative community systems aligned with Regenerate Cascadia’s vision.
You can donate directly to this group. Donations are 501(c)3 tax deductible.
REACH OUT:
SWV (at) regeneratecascadia.org