Wyld and The Freshwater Trust: A Partnership for Watershed Innovation

Combining technology and conservation expertise to protect our most vital resource

Water is the foundation of all life on our planet, yet freshwater ecosystems face unprecedented challenges from climate change, pollution, and development. In response to these challenges, forward-thinking organizations are forming strategic partnerships that leverage complementary strengths to accelerate conservation efforts.

One such collaboration is the partnership between Wyld and The Freshwater Trust (TFT), which exemplifies how business support can amplify conservation impact through data-driven approaches and targeted investments in watershed health.

The Freshwater Trust: Quantified Conservation Leaders

The Freshwater Trust has been at the forefront of freshwater conservation for over 40 years. What sets TFT apart is their commitment to “quantified conservation” – an approach that employs data, technology, and analytics to ensure that every restoration action delivers meaningful ecological outcomes.

TFT works across multiple dimensions:

Restoring degraded river systems and habitat

Working with communities, businesses, and agencies to create sustainable solutions

Their work spans watersheds across the Western United States, including Colorado, California, Idaho, and Oregon. While they have deep roots in Oregon’s Sandy River Basin, where decades of commitment have produced measurable improvements in watershed health, some of their most exciting innovations and strategic partnerships are now happening across multiple states.

Wyld’s Strategic Support: Funding Solutions that Scale

Support from Wyld helps fund the TFT’s analytical toolkits and technical homework in specific basins such as the Sandy River Basin. This investment recognizes the critical importance of science-based decision making in conservation.

By supporting TFT’s analytical capabilities, Wyld is helping to ensure that conservation efforts are directed where they can have the greatest impact – maximizing the ecological return on every dollar invested. This type of strategic philanthropy moves beyond traditional models to support the development of scalable solutions that can transform how we approach watershed conservation.

The Sandy River Basin: A Living Laboratory

The Sandy River Basin serves as a prime example of TFT’s approach in action. This watershed, which flows from the glaciers of Mount Hood to the Columbia River, provides critical habitat for endangered salmon and steelhead while also supporting human communities and agriculture.

With Wyld’s support, TFT continues to develop sophisticated modeling and monitoring capabilities in the Sandy Basin. These tools help identify priority restoration sites, track progress over time, and quantify the ecological benefits of various interventions – from riparian planting to flow restoration.

The insights gained from this work don’t just benefit the Sandy Basin; they inform conservation strategies across watersheds and create replicable models that can be adapted to diverse ecological contexts.

Beyond the Sandy: Innovation Across the West

While the Sandy River Basin demonstrates TFT’s longstanding commitment to watershed restoration, the organization’s innovative approach extends far beyond Oregon. Currently, some of their most groundbreaking work is happening in Colorado, California, and Idaho—regions that align with Wyld’s geographic interests as well.

In California, TFT is pioneering market-based solutions to address water quality and quantity challenges in agricultural landscapes. Their work in Idaho focuses on improving water temperature and habitat for endangered fish species through strategic restoration projects. Meanwhile, in Colorado, TFT is developing new approaches to water resource management that balance ecological needs with human demands in water-scarce environments.

These diverse initiatives showcase TFT’s ability to adapt their quantified conservation approach to different ecological, social, and regulatory contexts. With Wyld’s support, these innovations can continue to evolve and spread, creating a network of watershed solutions that address regional challenges while contributing to a larger body of conservation knowledge.

The Power of Partnership

What makes the Wyld-TFT partnership particularly effective is the alignment between Wyld’s commitment to innovation and TFT’s data-driven approach to conservation. Both organizations recognize that protecting our freshwater resources requires breaking down silos between sectors and embracing new technologies and methodologies.

This collaboration represents a model for how business support can go beyond traditional philanthropy to fund the development of tools and analyses that have far-reaching implications for conservation practice. By investing in TFT’s analytical capabilities, Wyld isn’t just supporting a single organization – they’re helping to advance the entire field of watershed science and management.

Looking Forward: Scaling Impact

As climate change intensifies pressure on water resources, partnerships like the one between Wyld and The Freshwater Trust will become increasingly important. By combining business resources with conservation expertise, these collaborations can accelerate the development and deployment of solutions at a pace that matches the urgency of our environmental challenges.

The future of freshwater conservation lies in this kind of cross-sector innovation – where technology, data science, ecological expertise, and strategic funding converge to create powerful new approaches to watershed protection and restoration.

Through their continued partnership, Wyld and The Freshwater Trust are demonstrating how forward-thinking organizations can work together to ensure that our most precious resource remains clean, abundant, and accessible for generations to come.

For more information about The Freshwater Trust and their quantified conservation approach, visit thefreshwatertrust.org