🦋 Ecosystem Regeneration
Most landscapes did not degrade overnight; they were worn down by decisions that made sense one season at a time. Regeneration asks for the opposite kind of patience—work that outlasts funding cycles and political terms, and that treats repair as a relationship rather than a one‑off intervention. The practices gathered here share that horizon: they assume that soil, water, and non‑human life have agency worth listening to, and that human flourishing is inseparable from the conditions of the whole watershed or biome. What holds together under this heading is not a single technique but a shared refusal to treat nature as backdrop. The through‑line is stewardship that can be handed down—learning that accumulates in bodies and communities, not only in reports—and a willingness to stay with the messy, slow work of making damaged places viable again.
Ontology Tags
Activities
Watershed Restoration and River Revival
TBS works with communities to bring back water abundance, revive river watersheds, and support sustainable development. Work includes harvesting structures across watersheds, efficient use such as drip irrigation, and water literacy for many actors. Before projects start, staff live in a village for six to twelve months to build trust, learn constraints, and co-design responses; engagement often runs ten to fifteen years per village. The core tools are johads, check dams, and percolation tanks, alongside literacy campaigns, drip systems, and sustainable farming. TBS reports 13,800 functioning rainwater harvesting systems and 13 rivers rejuvenated across India. Their work harvests 100 billion liters of rainwater annually and has converted more than 10,000 square kilometers from no-water zones into water-secure landscapes.
Val Estrela Historic and Cultural Ecotourism Site
After about 20 kilometers through great landscapes, the trail arrives at Val Estrela—the port where one-third of the slaves arrived in Brazil. This is a site of profound historical and cultural significance, and Sinal do Vale has started executing a master plan to regenerate the rivers, the old church, and weighing station to create a historic and cultural ecotourism site. They're doing this work together with the local quilombola communities and fishermen who maintained this abandoned site over the past decades. These are communities with deep ancestral connections to this place, who have been stewarding it even as it was neglected by broader society. Sinal do Vale is determined to continue this work, recognizing that restoration must honor both the ecological and cultural heritage of this place.
Camino do Guaraú Eco-Tourism Trail
The 110-kilometer trail starts not by coincidence at Sinal do Vale. By curating this officially recognized Camino do Guaraú, Sinal do Vale galvanized entrepreneurs, activists, change makers, and farmers to join the regeneration movement. The trail reconnects the local community to its heritage, culture, and ecotourism potential. The trail continues through nine other segments in the beautiful mountain range of the Mata Atlântica. In each segment, Sinal do Vale has identified areas that need reforestation or conservation to create an agroecological belt to preserve and regenerate the biodiversity in the region. Not least among the species they're working to protect: the golden lion tamarin monkeys, an endangered species that depends on the health of this ecosystem. This work is about creating connected corridors of life, ensuring that the fragments of the Mata Atlântica can support the full diversity of life they once sustained.
He Ripo Kau: A Vision for the Hokianga
He Ripo Kau applies the Tapere logic in Hokianga—linking taiao renewal with mana tangata. Since 2016, hui have convened hau kāinga around a shared model. NZD 3.2 million in Provincial Growth Fund support underpinned a 2020 recovery and employment wave—45+ km of stream fencing, 50+ ha planted, and training pipelines into land-care jobs. The case shows vision translating into paid, on-ground regeneration.
Tapere: Planning Rooted in Ancestral Boundaries
Tapere builds hyper-local plans aligned with Māori tapere land units—not imported grid lines. Reconnecting Northland supports hapū and whānau to state restoration goals that match culture and geography. Wānanga, story, and mapping invite communities to picture thriving ancestral estates. Visions then steer practical work—planting, stream repair, nature-based enterprise—through a shared cultural lens, with connectivity and corridors treated as landscape-scale outcomes.
Forest Regeneration and Cattle Ranching
Ranching and clearing have left pastures prone to drying. The program works with stockmen on regenerative grazing and reforestation, uses ForTerra results on carbon, biomass, and grazing management, and trials rapid tree establishment to recover grasslands, canopy, and biodiversity services tied to rain and storage.
Decolonizing Human-Wildlife Conflicts
Conflict-reduction programmes often lean on technical packages while understating long-standing Maasai practices. In MIKIA’s documentation, fence-heavy conservation has blocked elephant corridors, concentrated animals and people, and raised rather than lowered incidents. When Indigenous knowledge is sidelined, communities may be pushed toward lethal or noisy deterrents instead of approaches grounded in landscape relationships.
Sustainable Grassland Management
Open habitats cannot be sustained with uniform, industrial mowing. Historically, mosaic grazing and scythe work moved slowly across small parcels—patterns that modern large-field management erases along with specialist species. Bringing animals, shepherds, and patchwise grazing back is central. The team advises and trains farmers on these methods. Reception has shifted from scepticism to curiosity: neighbours now seek them out, reporting clear gains in visible biodiversity.
Network Naturregion Building
Many high-value patches sit isolated—a poor recipe for persistence. “Orphan” greens—verges, corporate lawns, small parks—can still host diversity if managed intentionally. The association coordinates Network Naturregion: people networking places—municipalities, schools, kindergartens, clubs, students, farmers, hunters, firms, and staff—so fragments link into something closer to a functional habitat network.
100 Regenerative Village Program
100 Regenerative Village (100RV) promotes agroforestry and regenerative practices so forests stay intact as water catchments. With Eco-Tourism Bali, hotels and food businesses are nudged toward local, sustainable sourcing—paying farmers who steward forest a credible alternative to selling land for tourism.
Native Tree Reforestation Campaign
A long-horizon campaign targets 749,000+ native trees on degraded ancestral land—guided by Indigenous ecological knowledge, aimed at biodiversity, food sovereignty, and climate resilience. Delivery includes nurseries, a core field team, ecological assessment, and harvest rules aligned with forest health.
Landscape Planning and Pattern Language
During onboarding, participants used cadastral sheets and community-scale maps of forest, slope, erosion risk, and connectivity to relate regeneration choices to parcel-scale management. Joint planning flagged priority zones—unstable slopes, riparian corridors, connectivity gaps—and paired them with a pattern vocabulary: swales and vetiver for erosion, agroforestry on degraded pasture, buffers near intakes. The aim was landscape literacy: seeing each plot as part of a larger system and preparing evidence for later DAO proposals.
Mangrove Conservation and Spatial Planning
SPaCES (Spatial Planning for Conservation, Sustainable Economic Development and Society) supplies mapping and planning support across Forever Sabah programmes. Current work maps mangrove extent, loss, threats, and restoration need toward protecting Sabah’s mangrove estate. The Lower Kinabatangan & Segama programme deepens co-governance—community protocols, Locally Managed Marine Areas, and Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas—in a large mangrove–estuary system. Livelihoods (e.g. solar cold storage for fishers, ecotourism) aim to reduce extraction pressure while communities steward the wetlands they rely on.
Watershed Conservation and Payment for Ecosystem Services
The Babagon catchment is a 3,001 ha forested watershed serving roughly 57% of Greater Kinabalu’s water demand, yet its three Indigenous Dusun communities have seen little benefit. Babagon Dam (1997) flooded Kg Tampasak—graves, orchards, padi—forcing resettlement below the impoundment with lasting harm. To protect water quality, the state restricted livelihoods on upstream Dusun lands and pressed for state-led stewardship of territories communities had long managed. After four months’ scoping and a one-year PES readiness phase, Forever Sabah brokered a multi-year dialogue among communities, government, and private actors to design Payment for Ecosystem Services. The fund model treats communities as trustees with government and others, pooling and returning payments from prospective streams—if cabinet approves and territorial rights are recognised, that could support durable jobs in monitoring, catchment care, and restoration. Mirani Momogompi Tadon Waig (MMTW) is the trained local team for monitoring, nurseries, and restoration, blending science and customary practice—including dragonfly and fish indicators—to read watershed health.
Findhorn Watershed Deer Forum
The Catchment Deer Forum aligns stalkers, gamekeepers, and other land managers so deer densities support both woodland regeneration and viable stalking. It connects herbivore pressure to tree survival and peatland recovery, while keeping venison in local supply chains—pairing ecological goals with rural food economies across fragmented ownership.
Riparian Watershed Recovery
Salmon offered a practical entry: a ready stakeholder base and steep declines—a pattern across Scotland, not only the Findhorn. The Riverwoods push on riparian woodland then connected salmon recovery to climate and woodland restoration for anglers, landowners, and conservation interests. Work extends beyond narrow riparian strips toward healthier, biodiverse catchment landscapes. Flood risk matters as much as cooler, cleaner water, so “climate-resilient rivers” sit alongside habitat goals. Carbon storage is pursued from eroding headwaters to salt marsh and seagrass in Findhorn Bay. Nature Recovery is watershed-wide: native species, invasive control, coastal carbon habitats. Fieldwork has included seedling and peat surveys, seagrass mapping, and new records of freshwater pearl mussels.
Pollinator Citizenship Program
The city treated the pollination system as an active partner—an alliance that fed information back into governance. The relationship moved through three recognitions: pollinators as mediators between people and ecosystems, pollinators as agents of prosperity in both ecological and economic terms, and finally pollinators as citizens with standing in the city’s political imagination. The Pollinator Citizenship Program mapped the city from a “bee’s eye view,” cutting across ordinary public–private boundaries. Supporting pollinators required seeing the territory as one system—an archipelago of places where nectar and pollen exist—so that corridors for pollinators could run across parcels and land-tenure lines. In practice, that meant governance that recognizes non-human residents, design and regulation attentive to pollinator needs, continuous corridor-building across ownership types, and a view of the city as several overlapping systems working at once.
Regenerative Agriculture Program
The program works through technical schools, pairing demonstration sites, student training, and carbon finance for fences and water. Farms document ~0.5 inch annual soil gain and up to $110,000 first-year income. Trainings include homemade repellents from chile, onion, and garlic so practices stay affordable and ecological. Soil-centered climate work ties to ~150% emissions offset via food—buying time, as Muñoz notes, for better batteries and other hard tech.
Savory Hub Initiative
The Savory Hub work targets 380,000 regional cattle hectares. Farmers who dedicate 15–30% as corridors can sharply raise returns while giving land back to wild connectivity. Large forest patches (over 500 hectares) anchor the map; farms stitch between them. A 40-year initiative with Replanet began at 30,000 hectares with room to grow toward two- to three-hundred thousand hectares via carbon markets, aiming for broad “360” benefits—farm income, carbon, water, and roughly a third of the landscape supporting nature. Regeneration draws on Lacandon practices with balsa and mulch rather than planting full-sun timber rows; it accelerates processes that fit local biology. Insect monitoring showed fivefold insect population gains, with beneficial species dominating pests—work neighbors first read as “crazy.” Bats—about half of local mammal species—signal ecosystem integrity.
Deshkan Ziibi Conservation Impact Bond
The Deshkan Ziibi Conservation Impact Bond (DZCIB) links investor repayment to five holistic outcome streams—habitat, knowledge/circling, economy, relational connection, and ecocentric wellbeing—rather than treating ecology as the only ledger. Partners launched design work in 2019 in ethical space hosted by Chippewas of the Thames First Nation. The five-year pilot began March 2020, spanning 60 ha in the zone, to accelerate healthy landscapes, nature-based solutions, reconciliation, and human–nature relationship. - Capital: CAD $130,000 from VERGE Capital (Pillar Non-profit Network), structured as a repayable prototype via the VERGE Breakthrough Fund (5% interest, three-year term). - Habitat delivery: Indigenous TEK and Western science together; 53 projects with nine partners (First Nations, trusts, municipalities, ALUS, etc.), typically with 1:1 in-kind match. - Outcome payers: Third-party evaluation gates repayment. Payers include 3M Canada, multi-year public anchor funding, and Pollinator Partnership—grants legally conditioned on outcomes. - Leadership: Carolinian Canada, VERGE, Thames Talbot Land Trust, Deshkan Ziibiing, Ivey Business School—explicitly Two-Eyed Seeing in design and review. Five pillars (each with a pay-for-success benchmark): habitat gains; people learning on the land; intercultural economic opportunity; nature connectedness; ecocentric sightings—broadening “success” beyond hectares. Through July 2021, the pilot reported 69 ha improved, 39,000+ native plants, and ~450 people in land-based learning—spanning volunteer planting (e.g. Briscoe Woods), invasive control and corporate seed collection (Hawk Cliff), bilingual trail and language work (Anishinaabensag Miikaanens), and multi-site work with conservation authorities and First Nations. As Robin Wall Kimmerer notes in the report, restoring land without restoring relationship is empty; relationship is what endures.
Healthy Landscape Strategy
Carolinian Canada's Healthy Landscape Strategy aims to grow Canada's Biggest Wildlife Garden connecting Toronto to Windsor with healthy habitat. The strategy is informed by ecologist Doug Tallamy's research demonstrating the ways in which native plants support greater insect populations, biodiversity, and landscape health than non-native plants. The Healthy Landscape Strategy includes four key activities, linking restoration and conservation priorities based on the latest local and global science: 1. Save local nature: Increase commitment to saving habitat with long-term agreements. 2. Steward healthy landscapes: Use best ecosystem practices to increase habitat quality. 3. Seed, grow, create, or restore high-quality habitat: Use native plants sourced locally, ecologically, and ethically to increase habitat quantity and connections. 4. Lead healthy resilient communities: Connect communities to nature through strong equitable collaboration, positive engagement, First Nations leadership, and an ethical, local native plant industry. Support a climate-smart, green economy for thriving local communities through cross-sector collaboration. Native plants hold cultural and relational significance to many Indigenous peoples who view native plants as relatives and friends, not commodities. As the demand for native plants increases, part of Carolinian Canada's strategy is to ensure an ethical seed strategy for native plants within the region.
Ecological Restoration of Valle de Zaquencipá
The land at Bosque Fractal is part of a critical watershed feeding Bogotá and surrounding areas, and includes degraded zones requiring urgent care. Over the last few years, the team has planted thousands of native trees, regenerated damaged soils, and begun monitoring water flow and soil health. With initial funding, Bosque Fractal will expand several high-priority projects, including: Oak Forest Restoration: Reviving native oak forests, which are crucial for water retention and biodiversity. The oak forests surrounding the valley are themselves ancient elders, teaching how to heal and regenerate both land and spirit. Pollinator Hotel: Supporting bees and other pollinators as keystone species for ecosystem health. Rainwater Purification Plant: Supplying clean water to the community while demonstrating regenerative water management practices. Regenerative Tourism: Creating sustainable tourism experiences rooted in cultural education and ecological stewardship. Bioregional Zone and Guest House: Serving as a living showcase for bioregional practices and a space for international learning exchanges, including building a guest house for workshops and cross-bioregional collaboration. The restoration work recognizes that this ecosystem, though occupying just 1.7% of Colombia's páramos, provides 85% of the country's drinking water, making its restoration critical not just locally but nationally.
River Detectives
River Detectives extends the community-science approach toward catchment care. From August 2023 to August 2024, residents researched historic management of rivers, bogs, and lochans—asking what past practices might teach present stewardship. The Flax & Flood strand traced mills, weather, and water—how nineteenth-century climate shifts and extreme events shaped operations and supply. That historical ecological knowledge informs today’s questions. Part 2 turns toward systematic monitoring so communities can describe current river conditions and inform management choices.
River Ericht Catchment Restoration
The Ericht is among Europe’s most important Atlantic salmon spawning systems. Restoration finance nationally falls short of need; new policy instruments are appearing, and this project is testing how to operate in that shifting policy and funding terrain. Work includes woodland and peatland restoration, with salmon survival as the narrative anchor: as one participant put it, many doubt salmon can persist—“but we’re going to do our best to see what we can do.” Habitat repair is treated as the decisive lever for keeping salmon in these rivers.
Climate Adaptation Learning Journey
Over five days, participants move through the bioregion—farms, coasts hit by flooding, river communities facing high water, sites where people are repairing roads themselves—linking water quantity and quality to everyday decisions. The aim is twofold: strengthen communities as first responders to local climate risk, and work with elected councillors so adaptation strategies are co-produced rather than imposed from outside.
Dancing in Salt Marshes
The program pairs salt-marsh restoration and water conservation with cultural engagement—including work toward river rights charters—so ecology and culture move together rather than as separate “environmental” and “arts” tracks. Because the marshes are too fragile for heavy visitation, the BLC commissioned a film: two dancers from local communities perform in costume on the marsh itself, giving people a visceral connection to a place many will never walk on.
Voices of the Dart
A community-based river stewardship program addressing the projected 39 megalitre daily flow deficit of the River Dart by 2050. The initiative uses a three-pronged approach: educational workshops across multiple riverside communities, citizen science data collection in partnership with Westcountry Rivers Trust, and artistic engagement through clay work and storytelling sessions—bringing together scientific data with local knowledge and cultural connection. The project has produced tangible outcomes including a Water Data Resource Pack, targeted reduction in per-person water usage, and a growing network of citizen scientists monitoring water quality along the river.
Reforesting Edible Forests
A regenerative food forest project that increases biodiversity while providing economic benefits to 47 communities. The project supports communities while restoring forest ecosystems, creating productive landscapes that integrate food security with ecological restoration.
Natural Ecosystems Restoration
Restoration focuses on natural areas and how they connect to working farmland. On priority sites such as La Muela, partners work to recover vegetation, soils, and water retention. On farms, agreements identify where to restore natural zones alongside production, with measures to hold water and soil and to build biodiversity. Corridor initiatives extend habitat connectivity so natural patches and productive land form a coherent mosaic.
Landscape-Scale Restoration Projects
The Alliance has adopted 11 community-focused projects that cover more than 15% of Scotland's rainforest zone, with more coming soon. These projects include Beò Airceig (an ambitious 30,000-ha collaboration between the community and landowners in the glens surrounding Loch Arkaig), Appin Rainforest Regeneration (created by the local community development trust to deliver economic, social and environmental benefits), and Loch Lomond Rainforest Project(aiming to deliver both habitat restoration and an education programme for locals and visitors). The projects are helping to tackle some of the big issues, such as deer management, invasive non-native species, job creation and even cultural regeneration through folk festivals!
Participatory Forest Restoration
Acción Serrana has developed a sophisticated restoration infrastructure which includes maintenance of protective fencing, seed collection, nursery construction and operation, seedling germination and transplantation, and strategic underplanting during the rainy season. They run more than 26 nurseries producing Polylepis trees across 12 operational areas, creating a supply chain for high-altitude reforestation. The work spans over 70 consecutive campaigns, resulting in more than 876,000 native trees planted across more than 290 hectares of degraded mountain landscapes. Each restoration campaign involves an extensive collaboration network: over 25 organizations including NGOs, government institutes, and businesses working together. The campaigns employ 65 permanent staff and mobilize more than 1,300 annual volunteers.
Watershed Restoration Planning
The team mapped “blue” and “green” zones along the river. Blue zones slow runoff from the mountains so water seeps into soil instead of stripping topsoil into the channel. Green zones target restoring the forests that once helped condense rain at lower altitude before air rose onto the plateau—part of reclaiming the gentler winter rains lost to flood-prone weather under current land use.