First Landscapes Community Call
Across the Cascadia Bioregion, stewards gathered on November 21, 2025, in phase one of this pilot year for Regenerate Cascadia’s BioRegen Program. Each Landscape Group gave updates and described their journeys so far.
We are so thrilled to nurture this emerging long-term, regenerative work taking part in a myriad of landscape ecoregions. The Phase One Landscape Groups are bringing together diverse landscapes, and are learning from one another with the objective of sustainable and co-created place-based strategies for ecological and culturally regenerative spaces in the Cascadia bioregion.
Learning by Listening
The first phase centers on landscape inquiry, relationship mapping, and bioregional understanding. Landscape stewards are experimenting with tools like bioregional mapping and story-based reporting to uncover what’s already alive in their places — and what voices have been missing from the conversation. These activities are helping groups shape regeneration strategies grounded not in abstract theory but in lived local experience.
Whatcom
Regenerate Whatcom has been holding informal gatherings and monthly permaculture meetups, at different locations throughout the county, since the Regenerate Cascadia Activation Tour last year. This began as tours and educational topics, and has evolved into the Walking Whatcom Waters series and showing the film The Water is Love, because water is a big issue and the group is making good connections with groups such as Sierra Club for future collaborations that will invite conversations within the community to “Attract people with something that they can engage with” however, the group also concedes that the work and contentious water conversations take time to develop trust. With Tribes, farmers, and foresters, Regenerate Whatcom is “showing up with an open ear” and planting seeds for friendships with an emphasis of just being a neighbor.
The Gorge
This group has been focused on how they can pay people to do the work. A big question the group is tackling is finding the right things to test and the right things to create. A project hoping to be funded is essentially case studies as a multi scaler community-based health equity test. The Stewards are meeting with the state of Oregon and region-wide agencies and have found that the goals of each are similar.
“It’s pretty phenomenal.”
The meetings and research takes time, but so far it’s been rewarding and it feels hopeful. Putting in the time to find out who is doing what is a huge part of tracking, which has been a major part of The Gorge Landscape Group’s workload during this time period.
Skagit
Talking to new and small farms. This Landscape Group’s focus is on food. A big intention in the mapping process is to meet weekly, being authentic at Friday night potlucks and enjoying some connection games. Skagit Land Trust and Fisheries Enhancement Group, and several more including an incredible presentation and a film showing and panel discussion of :”Fish Wars” which was very informative. conservation and natural history of the place
Mt. Olympus
This Landscape Group is learning from others and making connections and has met with Rural Development Initiative and learning who’s invested in different issues, including looking at food banks differently, not as a them but as an “us” so that hearts and minds can begin to see things from a place of unity. The Landscape stewards are seeing the impact when young people are doing the ground-level work, encouraging a greater conversation. The group is following a pathway to take housing to agriculture and create models that can be tiny impacts but could scale to create something like an eco village
Greater Victoria
In the Fall, this group hosted a Water is Love event in collaboration with faith communities and then a cross-pollination event with community members and representatives from three of the five watersheds in the region, which was very inspiring. Stewards have had talks with groups doing bioregional mapping, and U-Vic students which have gone on to be involved with Salish Sea Hub, which is a collaboration of multiple partners including the Victorian Native Friendship Center for Participatory Research. Holding potlucks are a potent way to continue the organizing and bringing the groups together,
Vashon Island
Beginning to form and putting the pieces together, a talented team with passion, connections, and experience; spanning finance, farming, and natural spaces stewardship. There is a lot of “recognition that the coming together and the impact of weaving is huge” as this group attend community council meetings in anticipation of holding community potlucks to open conversations about food resilience with the council which has a “scrappy” budget for a climate resilience hub on the unincorporated island. Despite mapping projects having been done in the past, the Stewards report that the coordination is lacking. There are discussions happening around food gleaning and setting up a program to address food insecurity.
Weaving Through the Bottlenecks
All of the landscape Stewards on this first Community Call spoke of food as one of the drivers for regenerative projects in their landscapes. “There’s not enough bandwidth to harvest, process, and distribute that food back out into the community.” Groups are identifying problems and “connecting to their communities to identify the bottlenecks”. One of the stewards brought up an excellent point: “this is an intergenerational movement.” Food production, land tending, and regenerating the land is “not just creating jobs, but it’s about and for people that don’t have access to land so that they can be involved in the landscape with hands-on work, in service to the community.”
How are we coming together to have broader coordination?
Stewards are grappling with both similar challenges and radically different contexts. Yet the shared commitment to listening, learning, and co-creation binds them together. As another reflection from the call reminded participants, “What connects us isn’t sameness … it’s a shared responsibility to the places we love.”
That sense of shared purpose matters. For many stewards, the most valuable part of the Cultivator isn’t simply the skills being offered — it’s the space to slow down, reflect, and connect across landscapes. These connections are the foundation of the emergent Landscape Hubs — organizing bodies that will steward regenerative action, coordinate resources, and nurture networks of care across Cascadia.
