Enhancing a participatory approach to ecological restoration with the River Guardian Program of Koitajoki

Koitajoki Watershed Restoration is a basin-wide river restoration project. The 200-km-long Koitajoki River flows through peatlands and boreal forests in the borderlands between Finland and Russia. The restoration project takes place on the Finnish side of the watershed. Since the 1950s, the river system has suffered from hydropower construction, peatland drainage, forestry, as well as gold and peat mining. The restoration project aims to bring key features of the Koitajoki watershed back to ecological health by restoring drained peatlands and dredged streams and rivers. The project was initiated by the non-profit Snowchange in 2022 and it is on-going at least until 2027.

In 2023, as part of the restoration project, Snowchange established the very first River Guardian Program in Finland. It is a community-based monitoring program with 18 local individuals, families and communities from the Koitajoki Watershed who all share a passion – recovering Koitajoki as seen through the local socio-cultural matrix of lived landscapes.

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