2026 RRI Awards

2026 Riverscape Restoration Initiative Grant Awards

2026 Riverscape Restoration Initiative Grants

The Biophilia Foundation is pleased to announce the 2026 cohort of Riverscape Restoration Initiative grantees, our largest set of grants ever. This year we are awarding $1.8 million across 32 grants to organizations, tribes, and community partners working to restore watersheds throughout Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and the Mexican states of Sonora and Coahuila.

The Biophilia Foundation launched the Riverscape Restoration Initiative in 2023 to increase the speed and scale of watershed restoration using low-tech, process-based restoration methods (LTPBR). These techniques, which include beaver dam analogs, post-assisted log structures, rock detention structures, and similar constructions, slow the flow of water across degraded landscapes. By doing so, they allow more water to soak into the soil and be released gradually over time, rather than rushing off the land during storms. The result is healthier, more resilient watersheds with more consistent stream flow, better habitat for wildlife, greater resistance to drought and wildfire, and improved conditions for the people and communities who depend on these lands.

This year’s grantees will put these techniques to work across a wide range of settings. Many projects focus on hands-on implementation, installing dozens to hundreds of structures in priority watersheds to slow erosion, reconnect floodplains, and support the return of beaver. Others build the systems that make restoration possible at scale, including workforce training, landowner networks, revolving loan funds, and new models for funding restoration work. Still others focus on engaging landowners and communities directly, through workshops, site assessments, and outreach that turn interest into action on the ground.

Geographically, this year’s work spans the Colorado Front Range and headwaters, the San Juan and Dolores watersheds of southwestern Colorado, the Arkansas and Poudre River basins, the Verde, San Pedro, and Altar Valley watersheds of Arizona, Tribal lands including the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, Southern Ute Indian Tribe, and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, the Rio Chama and Rio Grande headwaters of northern New Mexico, the Upper Weber Watershed in Utah, the Sahuaripa watershed and Sierra los Ajos in Sonora, Mexico, and the Sabinas River watershed in Coahuila, Mexico. 

We are grateful to all this year’s applicants and congratulate the following organizations on their 2026 Riverscape Restoration Initiative grants.

• Altar Valley Conservation Alliance, $82,000 over two years. Installing low-tech rock detention structures across 1,000 acres in the Altar Valley of southern Arizona to slow water flow, restore native vegetation, and build local restoration capacity.
• Amigos Bravos, $55,000 over two years. Restoring two headwater reaches in the Cruces Basin Wilderness of northern New Mexico with approximately 200 LTPBR structures to arrest erosion and restore wetland function.
• Arizona Land and Water Trust, $100,000. Launching the first phase of a 2,500-acre restoration effort on Babocomari Ranch near Elgin, Arizona, targeting priority ephemeral drainages with LTPBR techniques.
• Arizona Wildlife Federation, $25,000 over two years. Developing a statewide strategic action plan to grow the low-tech restoration workforce across Arizona.
• Big Thompson Watershed Coalition, $32,500 over two years. Pairing forest health treatments with restoration planning and landowner outreach across the Big Thompson watershed and northern Front Range, Colorado.
• Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, $100,000 over three years. Restoring 20 to 30 acres of wet meadow habitat in the Upper Gunnison River Basin, Colorado, benefiting Gunnison Sage-Grouse and working ranches.
• Borderlands Restoration Network, $100,000. Installing more than 200 erosion control structures across the Borderlands Wildlife Preserve in Arizona’s Sonoita Creek Wildlife Corridor.
• Central Colorado Conservancy, $32,500 over two years. Training staff and implementing beaver coexistence projects across the Upper Arkansas River watershed, Colorado.
• Coalition for the Poudre River Watershed, $99,000 over three years. Installing 50 to 75 LTPBR structures in the North Fork Poudre River to support the federally threatened Preble’s meadow jumping mouse, northern Colorado.
• Colorado West Land Trust, $25,000. Establishing a revolving loan fund to help private landowners afford restoration work in western Colorado.
• Forest Stewards Guild, $115,000 over three years. Advancing watershed restoration and landowner workshops in the Navajo Blanco and Cebolla Nutrias sub watersheds and along the Rio Tusas, northern New Mexico.
• Friends of the Verde River, $7,500. General operating support for riparian restoration data collection and planning in the Verde Watershed, Arizona.
• Headwaters of the Colorado Initiative, $7,500. Building a landowner network for restoration across the Little Snake River, Elk River, and Elkhead Creek watersheds in northwestern Colorado and southeastern Wyoming.
• Healthy Headwaters Working Group, housed within Audubon Rockies, $25,000. Launching education resources and a pilot workshop to implement Colorado’s new Beaver Conservation and Management Strategy across five priority basins.
• La Tierra del Jaguar, $87,000. Implementing LTPBR, agave agroforestry, and native plant propagation with 24 landowners in the Sahuaripa watershed of Sonora, Mexico.
• Lower San Pedro Watershed Alliance, $7,500. General operating support for community based conservation of the Lower San Pedro River, Arizona.
• Montezuma Land Conservancy, $25,000. Building landowner relationships and a pipeline of shovel ready restoration projects across Montezuma, Dolores, and San Miguel Counties, Colorado.
• Mountain Studies Institute, $100,000 over two years. Continuing low-tech stream restoration on the Mancos River for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, southwestern Colorado.
• Palmer Land Conservancy, $7,500. Launching a program to engage landowners on playa wetland conservation across eastern Colorado’s High Plains.
• Pronatura Noreste A.C., $93,000 over two years. Implementing LTPBR across the Sabinas River watershed in Coahuila, Mexico.
• River Network, $32,500. Advancing the Yampa River Collaborative’s restoration planning and landowner outreach in northwestern Colorado.
• Rocky Mountain Flycasters, $35,000. Restoring beaver influenced wetlands along George Creek in the Roosevelt National Forest, Larimer County, Colorado.
• Sacred Water Mountain Society, $63,000 over two years. Implementing an Indigenous rooted groundwater replenishment project in the Petaca watershed near Taos, New Mexico.
• Sky Island Alliance, $95,000 over two years. Advancing riparian restoration with ejido communities in the Sierra los Ajos of Sonora, Mexico.
• Sorenson Impact Institute, $25,000. Developing a model to engage health sector funders in restoration of Utah’s Upper Weber Watershed.
• Southern Plains Land Trust, $76,000 over two years. Installing 120 beaver dam analogs and structures across three ranches in the Arkansas River Basin of southeastern Colorado.
• Southern Ute Indian Tribe, $90,000 over two years. Installing LTPBR structures along Devil Creek on the Tribe’s reservation near Ignacio, Colorado.
• The Watershed Center, $112,500 over two years. Restoring the Cabin Creek drainage and launching a pilot integrating restoration with wildfire resilience planning in the St. Vrain Basin, Colorado.
• Tó Nizhóní Ání, $88,000 over two years. Restoring ephemeral stream channels in the Upper Oraibi Wash watershed of the Black Mesa region, Navajo Nation, Arizona.
• Upper San Juan Watershed Enhancement Partnership, $7,500. Advancing landowner engagement and a county wide education campaign for restoration near Pagosa Springs, Colorado.
• White River Alliance, $8,500. Engaging private landowners in restoration site assessments and hands on installation in Rio Blanco County, Colorado.
• Wildlands Restoration Volunteers, $25,000 over two years. Strengthening the capacity of the Rivers Program across Colorado’s Front Range headwater tributaries.

Beyond this year’s grants, the Biophilia Foundation is also proud to continue supporting the restoration work of the Hopi Tribe at Pongsikya and the Navajo Nation at Tsegi Canyon, in partnership with Fred Phillips Consulting, the Catena Foundation, and the Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program.