The Housatonic Valley Association team is excited to share our 2025 Year in Review, which highlights the organization’s signature conservation initiatives, projects, and partnerships. Thank you to those who generously supported HVA in the 2025 calendar year!
Letter from the Executive Director:
Dear Friends,
The Housatonic Valley Association celebrates its 85th anniversary this year, and our success is thanks to all of you! What began in 1941 as a call for regional planning and local zoning to safeguard the Housatonic River in Connecticut is now a multistate watershed organization and accredited land trust, working collaboratively to address the impacts of the climate crisis on the natural world and human communities of the Housatonic River watershed and beyond. Despite the scale of the threat and the challenge of shifting federal priorities, we are seeing real results and have reason for clear-eyed hope as we look to the future. That hopeful future is possible because of you.
We are pleased to share HVA’s 2025 Year in Review, not only to highlight our signature conservation initiatives and broad partnerships, but also with profound gratitude for your generous support and faith in our work. HVA remains a catalyst and peer leader, collaborative by nature and committed to problem solving using the best ideas and knowledge of our conservation partners and the communities of the Housatonic River watershed. Our Berkshire Clean, Cold & Connected and Follow the Forest initiatives are helping wildlife move freely in response to climate change and development pressures. We bring technical knowledge and resources to towns and cities as they adapt bridge and culvert infrastructure to accommodate floods of increasing severity, while also providing safe passage for animals beneath busy roadways. We support your local land trust, finding resources and engaging more partners to accomplish land protection at a scale and complexity that no single organization could handle on its own. We bring people out on the river to experience the wonder and beauty of a place most of us have never seen from a kayak or canoe.
We are humbled by your love of this region and of HVA. Together we are making a real difference, conserving the lands and waters of our region and repairing our connection to the natural world, long into the future.
With gratitude,
Tim Abbott
Executive Director
