Mission
We are a community of people inspired to honor, protect and restore our world-renowned mountain environment.
We advocate strong, enforceable protections for our mountain, for clean air and water, for healthy forests and wildlife habitat. We support a community informed and engaged with the issues and ready to act. We encourage leaders and decision makers to learn, understand and act appropriately for citizens and the land, above the influence of outside and exploitive interests.
Collaborating with like-minded groups within and beyond our area, we support the best environmental and regenerative practices for managing resources. We tell the compelling natural and cultural story of our mountain, as we invite and activate people to appreciate and explore it.
Vision
We recognize Mount Shasta and the surrounding bioregion as a magnificent natural sanctuary drawing visitors from all over the world, and as a sacred landscape of high significance to indigenous tribes. Our work respects its land, air and water as gifts necessary to life. As responsible stewards, we must acknowledge the unique and irreplaceable contribution the region makes to the state of California and the world.
Through this common vision, we continue to ensure Mount Shasta’s outstanding environment will always thrive, attracting visitors to explore, enjoy, connect, and recharge. Local citizens, engaged and informed, benefit from healthy outdoor lifestyles. All people may appreciate our interdependent relationship with the living and non-living aspects of the natural environment. Local leaders, understanding the intrinsic value of this place, will not consider incompatible uses and shortsighted resource extraction as options. Together, we preserve our forests, pristine waters and majestic landscapes for future generations to enjoy and appreciate.
Our founding vision was inspired by the “Bioregionalism” movement, which opposes a homogeneous economy and consumer culture lacking stewardship of the environment, and is based on natural “bioregions” defined through physical and environmental features including watershed boundaries, soil and terrain characteristics. Bioregionalism stresses that such determinations are also cultural phenomena emphasizing local populations, knowledge and solutions.
Values
We act with integrity and transparency. We are passionate, strong advocates for our mountain, unafraid of complexity, and unafraid of simplicity. Best available science and life-enhancing values inform our policies and our actions.
Education, research, logic and factual knowledge are important, as we listen and persuade, seeking common ground with others in our community and world as we join in the inevitable transition from an extractive to a regenerative economy.
We engage in our mission and values by:
- A proactive long-term bioregional multi-level approach to landscape conservation for present and future generations
- Protecting water resources, especially from high-elevation recharge areas
- Restoring healthy, diverse forests and fire regimes
- Fostering ecological and community resilience in the face of climate change
- Supporting local stewardship and restoration activities
- Incorporating cultural and community values as the foundation of our actions
- Welcoming visitors and enhancing their experience
- Increasing the quality of life for local citizens, communities and visitors
- Engaging in intergenerational education
- Stewarding our home ecosystem, as a human responsibility
We’re serious, but we have fun, treat people with kindness and respect, and we like to go outside.
Stakeholders
Our work benefits a variety of stakeholders, whom we may describe according to several types of characteristics:
- Geographic – Local residents, visitors who arrive from many states and countries and for many reasons, and people downstream and outside our area who benefit from our ecosystem services
- Demographic – Including diverse income levels, ages and generations, ethnicities and spiritual interests, personalities, values, lifestyles and activities
- Community – citizens, neighborhoods, elected officials, government agencies, business sectors (i.e. tourism, outdoor recreation, manufacturing, agriculture), environmental activists and collaborators (i.e. fishing enthusiasts, conservationists and aligned groups)
We lead as well as listen, in respectful and truthful dialogs to teach and learn best practices to preserve, protect and restore this special environment for future generations.