As our Thinking Like Water series comes to a close, we turn our attention from individual sites to the watershed as a living system.
This includes a rare, live conversation with two very special guests: the legendary ecological restoration pioneer Bill Zeedyk and conservation scientist Shantini Ramakrishnan. Their combined experience spans decades of hands-on restoration, mentorship, and community-led learning to troubleshoot and restore degraded landscapes and waterways.
In Episode 5, the finale of this five-part series, we explore restoration approaches born from local wisdom. The film zooms in on Bill Zeedyk’s watersheds to witness a river’s rewilding through a town center with Lea Knutson of Hermit’s Peak Watershed Alliance, induced meandering on a wildlife refuge with Craig Sponholtz of Watershed Artisans, and a landscape-scale perspective from Josh Miner at Fort Union Ranch, where Zeedyk’s techniques have been applied across 95,000 acres of canyons, tributaries, rivers, uplands, and roads.
This final episode and live conversation reinforces the series’ core insights: water is not something to control, but to understand; reading the landscape is a key first step to restoring our land and waterways; and where there’s a will, there’s a way to coax a river back to its perennial nature.
Posted: February 20, 2026