To honor and regenerate Cascadia as a single living bioregion, uniting the Indigenous nations, watershed communities, cities, farms, forests, and grassroots projects of the Pacific Northwest across the Canada-US border so that the Pacific temperate rainforests, the great rivers, and the salmon that bind them are protected, restored, and celebrated through the Cascadia movement and bioregionalism.
Protect remaining old-growth and restore second-growth forests across the Pacific temperate rainforests; recover wild salmon and Southern Resident orca populations through habitat restoration and dam removal on the Snake and other rivers; conserve and reconnect wildlife corridors across the Cascade Range and Canada-US border; safeguard the Salish Sea from pollution and warming; and advance the region's transition to renewable energy and climate resilience.
Center Indigenous sovereignty, treaty rights, and land back across Cascadia's nations; strengthen cross-border bioregional cooperation through the Cascadia Department of Bioregion and the Turtle Island Bioregional Congress; build local food, energy, and watershed economies; deepen place-based education and the Cascadia movement's cultural identity; and ensure equitable, just transitions for rural timber and fishing communities and urban populations alike.
Cascadia is stewarded by a vast web of nations, communities, and organizations rather than any single body. The Cascadia Department of Bioregion, a registered nonprofit, anchors the Cascadia movement through education, fiscal sponsorship, a project directory, and a directory of Cascadia groups; the Turtle Island Bioregional Congress convenes bioregional organizers across the West Coast; and hundreds of Indigenous nations, land trusts, salmon and forest coalitions, watershed councils, and city initiatives across British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and northern California carry the work. The movement's shared symbols, from the Doug flag to the Cascadia Cup, knit a cross-border cultural identity.
Cascadia is stewarded by a vast web of nations, communities, and organizations rather than any single body. The Cascadia Department of Bioregion, a registered nonprofit, anchors the Cascadia movement through education, fiscal sponsorship, a project directory, and a directory of Cascadia groups; the Turtle Island Bioregional Congress convenes bioregional organizers across the West Coast; and hundreds of Indigenous nations, land trusts, salmon and forest coalitions, watershed councils, and city initiatives across British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and northern California carry the work. The movement's shared symbols, from the Doug flag to the Cascadia Cup, knit a cross-border cultural identity.
Cascadia's regenerative economy blends sustainable forestry and fisheries, regenerative agriculture and viticulture in the Willamette and Fraser valleys, renewable energy, outdoor recreation and regenerative tourism, and a major urban technology and trade economy along the Vancouver-Seattle-Portland corridor. The Cascadia Department of Bioregion supports place-based projects through fiscal sponsorship and a project directory, complementing philanthropy, public conservation investment, and the solidarity and cooperative economy promoted within the Cascadia movement.
A bioregion spanning roughly 2,500 miles of coast and a land area defined by the Columbia, Fraser, Snake, and Klamath watersheds; the largest temperate rainforest on Earth; an estimated 350 bird and mammal species, 48 reptiles, and hundreds of fungal, lichen, and bryophyte species; five species of Pacific salmon as keystone; more than 80 percent of the population concentrated on about 17 percent of the land in the Vancouver-Seattle-Portland corridor; and a cross-border bioregional movement organized through the Cascadia Department of Bioregion and the Turtle Island Bioregional Congress.
The Cascadia land node demonstrates how an entire transboundary bioregion can be understood and stewarded as a single living community defined by watershed and forest rather than by national borders. Pacific salmon returning from the sea to spawn in mountain streams tie the temperate rainforest, the great rivers, the cities, and the Indigenous nations of the Pacific Northwest into one interdependent web, and the region's history shows both the cost of clearcutting and damming that web and the growing movement to restore it. From old-growth defense and Snake River dam-removal campaigns to Indigenous land back and the cultural energy of the Cascadia movement, Cascadia offers a working model of bioregional identity and regeneration at continental scale. Organized through the Cascadia Department of Bioregion, it embodies the bioregional vision of people learning to live as one organic community of sea, forest, and falling waters.
When defining bioregional Land Nodes, geographic qualities are crucial because they help establish the ecological, cultural, and environmental context for regenerative practices. Here are the key geographic qualities to consider:
Cascadia is home to hundreds of First Nations and Native American peoples whose cultures are rooted in salmon, cedar, and sea. Along the coast live the Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Kwakwaka'wakw, Nuxalk, Nuu-chah-nulth, Coast Salish, Makah, and Chinookan peoples, and in the northwestern California corner the Yurok, Karuk, Wiyot, and Hupa, as catalogued by the Cascadia Department of Bioregion. A trade language, Chinook Jargon, once linked as many as 300,000 people across the region. Cedar-plank houses, oceangoing canoes, and the potlatch ceremony express a maritime culture of abundance and reciprocity. Today Cascadia is also a densely multicultural region of cities and settler communities increasingly identifying with a shared bioregional and Cascadia movement identity across the Canada-US border.
Pacific temperate rainforest and salmon-bearing watershed, the largest temperate rainforest on Earth, linking the Pacific Ocean, the great river systems, and the Cascade and Coast mountain ranges into a single connected web of sea, forest, and freshwater
Mean annual temperatures range from roughly 9 to 12 degrees Celsius along the coast and lowland valleys, cooler in the mountains and slightly more continental in the interior.
A pronounced wet season runs from October through April, when Pacific storms deliver the bulk of the year's rain and mountain snow; summers are comparatively dry, especially July and August. Coastal rainforests receive rain across most of the year, while the interior plateaus east of the Cascade Range are markedly drier.
Coastal and lowland soils are largely young, deep, and acidic forest soils (Andisols and Spodosols) developed on glacial deposits and volcanic ash from the Cascade Range volcanoes, exceptionally productive under the wet, mild climate. The Willamette and Fraser valleys hold rich alluvial soils, while the interior Columbia Plateau carries deep wind-blown loess over basalt.
Highly variable: coastal temperate rainforests receive 2,000 to over 4,000 millimetres per year, among the wettest places in North America, while the rain-shadowed interior basins east of the Cascades receive as little as 200 to 400 millimetres.
Mild overall: coastal summer highs commonly 18 to 24 degrees Celsius and winter lows rarely far below freezing, while interior valleys and plateaus swing to summer highs above 35 degrees Celsius and winter lows well below minus 15 degrees Celsius. Mountain snowpack is heavy and persistent at elevation.
The deep, moist, organic-rich soils of the coastal forests store some of the highest carbon densities of any ecosystem on Earth, bound up in old-growth trees, downed logs, and forest floor. Industrial clearcut logging across the 19th and 20th centuries, along with agriculture in the lowland valleys, degraded soils and watersheds in many areas, and regenerative forestry, riparian restoration, and regenerative agriculture across the Willamette, Fraser, and interior valleys now work to rebuild soil and water health.
Cascadia is defined by its watersheds. The Columbia River, draining roughly 670,000 square kilometres across seven US states and British Columbia, and its great tributary the Snake River form the largest system; the Fraser River drains much of southern British Columbia to the Salish Sea; and the Klamath River drains the southern bioregion. Countless coastal rivers carry rain and snowmelt from the Cascade Range and Coast Mountains directly to the Pacific.
Communities draw on alluvial aquifers in the Willamette, Puget, and Fraser lowlands, on the vast basalt aquifers of the Columbia Plateau, and on abundant surface water from rivers and mountain snowpack. Declining snowpack under climate change is a growing concern for the region's water security.
The Pacific Ocean forms the western edge of the bioregion, with the Salish Sea, Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the Strait of Georgia at its heart. The Columbia, Fraser, Snake, and Klamath rivers and thousands of coastal streams thread the region, and Cascade Range lakes and the fjords of the British Columbia and Alaskan coast punctuate the shore.
Cascadia's forests are dominated by towering Douglas fir, western red cedar, Sitka spruce, western hemlock, and, in the south, the world's tallest trees, the coast redwood. The bioregion is home to an estimated 350 bird and mammal species, dozens of reptiles and amphibians, and thousands of fungi, lichens, mosses, and invertebrates. Pacific salmon in five species, sockeye, pink, chum, coho, and Chinook, are the keystone of its rivers; orcas, including the endangered Southern Resident population, hunt the Salish Sea; and gray wolves, Roosevelt elk, northern spotted owls, banana slugs, and the rare spirit bear of the central British Columbia coast complete the web.
Cascadia holds the largest and most productive temperate rainforest on Earth, with old-growth stands storing more biomass per hectare than almost any other ecosystem. The Cascadia Department of Bioregion counts roughly 350 bird and mammal species, 48 reptiles, and hundreds of fungal, lichen, and bryophyte species, alongside thousands of invertebrates and soil organisms. The salmon-forest connection makes the region globally significant, and its old-growth forests are critical habitat for endangered species such as the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet.
Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) in five species as the nutrient link between ocean and forest; western red cedar (Thuja plicata), the tree of life of Northwest Coast cultures; Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) and coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) as forest giants; the Southern Resident orca (Orcinus orca) as apex marine predator; the gray wolf and spirit bear as keystone carnivores; and the northern spotted owl as an old-growth indicator.
Elevation ranges from sea level along the Pacific to 4,392 metres (14,411 feet) at the summit of Mount Rainier, the highest of the Cascade Range volcanoes, which also include Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens, Mount Baker, Glacier Peak, and Mount Shasta. The terrain rises steeply from coastal lowlands and the Salish Sea basin through the Coast Ranges and Cascades to high interior plateaus.
Cascadia is shaped by the Cascadia subduction zone, where the Juan de Fuca plate dives beneath North America, building a chain of active volcanoes and generating great earthquakes. Signature landforms include the glaciated Cascade Range stratovolcanoes, the deep fjords and thousands of islands of the British Columbia and Alaska coast, the Salish Sea basin, the Columbia River Gorge, and the rain-shadowed Columbia Plateau and high desert to the east.
Steep, wet coastal and mountain slopes carry high landslide and erosion risk, sharply increased by clearcut logging and road-building, which deliver sediment to salmon streams. Wildfire in the drier interior and east-side forests, intensifying with climate change, also raises post-fire erosion risk, making forest protection and riparian restoration regional priorities.
This land lies within the ancestral territories of hundreds of Indigenous nations of the Pacific Northwest, including the Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Kwakwaka'wakw, Nuxalk, Nuu-chah-nulth, Coast Salish, Makah, Chinookan peoples, Yurok, Karuk, and Hupa, among many others. These nations have lived with the salmon, cedar, and sea since time immemorial and were dispossessed of their lands and rights through colonization, treaty-breaking, and the imposition of the Canada-US border across their territories. Their descendants remain the original and ongoing stewards of Cascadia, and the Cascadia Department of Bioregion affirms that any bioregional future must center Indigenous sovereignty and the land back movement.
Cascadia's cultural landscape blends ancient and contemporary: Northwest Coast totem poles, longhouses, and canoe journeys; the cities of Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland with their distinctive ecological culture; and a vivid grassroots Cascadia movement with its Doug flag, a Douglas fir on fields of blue, white, and green, the Cascadia Department of Bioregion, Cascadia Day, and the cross-border Cascadia Cup football rivalry. The Turtle Island Bioregional Congress and bioregional gatherings continue a lineage of place-based organizing across the region.
Cascadia's First Peoples developed sophisticated knowledge of salmon runs, clam gardens, estuary and Salish Sea fisheries, controlled burning of prairies and oak savanna, and the cultivation and weaving of western red cedar, whose bark, roots, and wood clothed, housed, and carried entire cultures. Salmon and cedar are treated as sacred relatives rather than resources, honored in first-salmon ceremonies and the potlatch. This knowledge, carried in Chinook Jargon trade networks and oral histories, increasingly guides co-management of fisheries and forests across the region.
Following the maritime fur trade, the Oregon Treaty of 1846 drew the Canada-US border along the 49th parallel through Indigenous territory, and the 19th and 20th centuries brought intensive settlement, damming of the Columbia and Snake rivers for hydropower, and industrial clearcut logging that felled vast tracts of old-growth forest. The late 20th century saw landmark conflicts over old-growth and the northern spotted owl, the rise of bioregionalism through thinkers like David McCloskey, and salmon and dam-removal campaigns. The contemporary Cascadia movement, organized through the Cascadia Department of Bioregion, frames the region's future around ecological regeneration and place-based identity.
Vast forests of Douglas fir, western red cedar, and Sitka spruce for timber; the Columbia and Snake rivers for hydropower and irrigation; salmon and shellfish fisheries; fertile Willamette and Fraser valley farmland and vineyards; and minerals and abundant fresh water. The region's greatest resource may be its standing old-growth forests and intact watersheds themselves.
Cascadia is a renewable-energy powerhouse: extensive hydropower on the Columbia system, growing onshore and offshore wind, solar in the drier interior, geothermal along the volcanic Cascade Range, and sustainable timber and biomass. Its dense, transit-oriented cities and strong climate politics position it as a leader in the low-carbon transition.
The salmon rivers are Cascadia's master corridors, linking the Pacific to inland forests across the Cascade Range; the Pacific Flyway carries migratory birds along the coast; and the largely intact mountain spine of the Cascades and Coast Mountains forms a continental wildlife corridor. Cross-border conservation initiatives knit habitat together across the Canada-US border from the Salish Sea to the high peaks.
The Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland metropolitan corridor, often called the Cascadia megaregion, holds the great majority of the bioregion's population on a small fraction of its land. These cities anchor the region's economy and the Cascadia movement while exerting pressure on surrounding farmland, forests, and the Salish Sea.
