Cascade Headwaters Trust Bellingham, WA · Since 1987

Programs

Five kinds of patient work

Conservation agreements, restoration crews, a volunteer monitoring network, guided walks and free help for landowners. Different work, one purpose: keep the water cold and the ground intact.

Where to begin

Most people arrive here through one of two doors: they own land with water on it, or they want to spend a Saturday somewhere that matters. Both doors open onto the same work.

A braided reach of the Nooksack with gravel bars and young cottonwood
Gravel the river moved itself, in a reach where we took the levee out and let it.Nooksack valley

The usual order of things

How a project actually begins

  1. Someone calls

    Usually a landowner, sometimes a neighbour, occasionally a county biologist who has run out of other ideas.

  2. We walk it twice

    Once in the dry season and once when it is running, because a property tells you different things in different months.

  3. We write it down in plain language

    A short plan with the landowner's own goals at the top of the page, not ours.

  4. We keep coming back

    Monitoring visits, weeding, and a walk every year for as long as the agreement lasts — which is to say, indefinitely.

Talk it through

Tell us about your creek.

A first conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing. If what you need is a different organisation, we will tell you which one and give you a name.