Campaigns

Old-growth clearcutting on the Willamette National Forest. Photo by Cascadia Wildlands.

The Cascadia Bioregion is the lush, forested region extending from northern California to southcentral Alaska. Cascadia Wildlands works within this bioregion (and the U.S.) where immediate threats to wild places are highest. Currently, these places are Oregon and southeast Alaska.

Decades of aggressive clearcutting have destroyed more than 80% of the original old-growth forests that once blanketed the Northwest. And year after year, our government plans and subsidizes public forest destruction for the profit of private timber companies.

Cascadia Wildlands uses a combination of education, organizing, outreach, agitation, litigation, advocacy, and collaboration to defend wild places and promote sustainable, restoration-based forestry. We focus on specific projects and campaigns that achieve tangible, on-the-ground results. When it comes to protecting Cascadia, we deliver.

Protecting Forests and Watersheds

Bunchgrass Ridge, Willamette National Forest. Photo by Brett Cole.

The formation of Cascadia Wildlands in 1998 was catalyzed by the lawless practice of clearcutting temperate ancient forests authorized by the Salvage Rider. As a result of this and continuing threats in this arena, we devote much of our efforts towards protecting old forests as they are critical to the survival of species teetering on the brink of extinction, including the marbled murrelet and northern spotted owl.
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Bringing Back Wolves

Imnaha pack pups 2013 (photo by ODFW).

Through trapping, poisoning and shooting, government agents and bounty hunters killed off every last gray wolf in Oregon, Washington and California by the 1940s. However, the species has begun to make a remarkable comeback in the Pacific West as wolves have migrated west after a successful re-introduction into the northern Rockies in the mid-1990s. Today, approximately 137 individuals and 16 packs or alpha pairs now call Oregon home. Similar numbers have been restored into Washington, with 126 individuals and 27 packs. In 2015, an alpha pair had pups in California for the first time in nearly a century. Today, California has an estimated count of 6 individuals and 1 pack in residence.
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Save Our Wild Salmon Heritage

Breaching Coho salmon as it moves upstream (photo by Tom and Pat Leeson).

Cascadia is a bioregion defined by the northeastern Pacific Ocean and the associated watersheds. Those watersheds are filled with rivers, creeks and rivulets and many of those waterways were filled with salmon and steelhead. So salmon—in a very real sense—once defined the place we live in and love. If we continue to squander this precious resource and lose our wild salmon, what does that say about us? We feel strongly that we cannot let that happenstance occur and therefore must restore and protect our wild salmon heritage.
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Combating Climate Change

Climate change is currently the greatest and most formidable threat that we face as a planet. The science supporting climate change is conclusive and repeatedly borne out by myriad weather anomalies and arctic ice patterns, as well as biological phenomenon such as altered timing of migrations and species’ distributions.

Cascadia Wildlands recognizes the immediate need to take action to lower atmospheric greenhouse gases and bring the climate back to a stable condition. We take a two-pronged approach to combating climate change, which includes both halting the fossil fuel industry’s emissions of greenhouse gasses, and defending Cascadia’s forests, which are some of the best in the world for storing carbon.
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Our Tools for Change

Illinois River, Siskiyou Mountains (photo by Rolf Skar).

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