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Reconnecting water to the west

• Low-tech, process-based restoration

  In the West, rivers are the lifeblood of everything we love. Thriving communities, wildlife and the places we call home. But today, drought and degraded streams are putting that future at risk.

  From the Colorado to the Columbia Rivers and from the Great Basin to the Great Plains, the headwaters of western rivers that once nourished the land now dry out faster and stay dried longer, threatening livelihoods and wildlife.

  At The Nature Conservancy, we're tackling this challenge with a simple but powerful approach... low-tech, process-based restoration. Using local materials like rocks, posts, willows and sagebrush, we build structures that slow and spread water, plant trees that stabilize soils and manage grazing to let native vegetation return. And by mimicking beavers, nature's engineers, we help streams reconnect with their floodplains and bring wetlands back to life.

  With low tech, process-based restoration, we help the streams get back to a healthier functioning system in a shorter timeline than they would be able to do on their own.

  This approach is so effective in dry and degraded Western states because it's accessible work. It's something that a lot of people can do, whether it's volunteers or conservation corps. If we can help slow and spread that water and get it to stay on the landscape just a little longer, we can have a really big impact. A West-wide problem demands a West-wide solution—stream restoration at scale.

  From salmon country and the northwest to the high mountain valleys of the Rockies, to the Red Rock Canyons of Southern Utah, restoration crews and landowners are proving what's possible.

  The Nature Conservancy works to scale up stream restoration across seven states throughout the Western U.S.

  Experiences and knowledge learned in one place become the foundation for success in another. There's many, many partners involved to make a single project happen, like the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, private landowners, Tribes that are managing those lands. It takes all of them for a project to be successful, and we're kind of helping to build those communities and networks in each state to scale up this work.

  From Tribal Nations to ranching families, these communities depend on water staying on the land. For ranchers, this work means healthy range lands, healthy cattle and stronger communities. It's not just conservation, it's stewardship and survival. Every dollar helps us reach a new stream or involve a new partner. Using local materials, local talent and working with nature to restore streams and wetlands means that these investments can translate even modest funding into meaningful landscape-scale impact.

  We know what works, and with your support, we can expand this type of restoration throughout the West. This is conservation at its best—simple, cost-effective and rooted in partnership. Together we can restore rivers, recover from drought and wildfire, and create a legacy of water and wildlife for generations to come.