WELLSPRING COMMONS
Promoting bioregional regeneration and supporting community wellbeing in northwest Connecticut.
Mission & Purpose
The mission of Wellspring Commons is to promote bioregional regeneration and support community wellbeing in northwest Connecticut.
The work of the Wellspring Commons Stewards is to:
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protect biodiversity and key ecosystems in northwest Connecticut
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bring together people, ideas, tools and technologies to contribute to and model place-based solutions to sustainability issues
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work to shift the dominant narrative towards a more ecocentric worldview.
Bioregional Regeneration
Bioregionalism takes a view of a landscape, its communities and culture, as shaped by topographic and biological characteristics rather than by man-made divisions. It connects people to place, supporting the thriving of the entire life community, and linking the local to the larger context. Bioregionalism puts into place a different values base—one that is life-enhancing regenerative rather than destructive and exploitative, and that celebrates diversity.
Wellspring Commons
Climate change and ecological degradation render the future highly uncertain. Natural systems are approaching or past tipping points. Protecting key local landscapes, everywhere possible, is crucial for navigating this crisis and providing the best defense against future unknowns. Intact ecosystems, clean water, healthy soil, and biodiversity are the foundation for long-term resilience. Keeping older growth forests standing, protecting habitat for biodiversity, preserving remaining agricultural land and developing local food production helps build community resilience and wellbeing.
In the face of present and future climate challenges, more place-based models are needed of the practical possibilities that make sustainability achievable on a local scale. The vision for Wellspring Commons was born in response to this need. Initially a project launched in 2020, The Wellspring Commons Stewards, Inc, was founded as a nonprofit in 2022.
Our name: A wellspring is a source of abundant and continual supply; commoning is a worldview and also a regenerative social system that tends to the wellbeing of the whole - the rest of the natural world as well as humans.
