Bioregional Coordination organizes human collaboration around the natural boundaries of watersheds, ecosystems, and living landscapes rather than arbitrary political borders. This place-based governance approach recognizes that ecological systems — rivers, forests, aquifers, wildlife corridors — operate according to their own logic, and that effective stewardship requires aligning human institutions with these natural patterns. Bioregionalism offers both a framework for understanding place and a practice of inhabitation that fosters ecological literacy, community resilience, and regenerative relationship with the land.
The bioregional movement emerged in the 1970s through the work of Peter Berg and Raymond Dasmann, who coined the term and founded Planet Drum Foundation to promote "reinhabitation" — learning to live-in-place in ways that restore ecological and cultural vitality. Kirkpatrick Sale's "Dwellers in the Land" (1985) provided a comprehensive philosophical framework, while watershed councils and land trusts developed practical governance mechanisms. The approach draws on Indigenous land management practices that sustained ecosystems for millennia, recognizing traditional ecological knowledge as essential to bioregional wisdom.
Contemporary bioregional coordination manifests through watershed governance bodies, bioregional learning centers, regenerative agriculture networks, and emerging experiments in bioregional financing and currencies. The Salmon Nation initiative in the Pacific Northwest, the Cascadia bioregion movement, and the Bioregional Learning Centre network exemplify place-based organizing at scale. Digital tools now enable bioregional mapping, ecological monitoring, and coordination across dispersed communities. Key organizations include Regenerate Cascadia, the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, and the Bioregional Development Group. The field increasingly intersects with Rights of Nature movements, recognizing that bioregions themselves may hold legal standing as subjects deserving protection.