APPALACHIAN HEADWATERS
Environmental Education & Ecological Restoration
The Appalachian Beekeeping Collective is a project of Appalachian Headwaters, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Headwaters’ primary focus is on ecological restoration and environmental education.
Headwaters creates and supports a wide range of environmental programs in addition to the Appalachian Beekeeping Collective. One of Headwaters’ goals is to restore native forests on former mountaintop removal coal mining sites in central Appalachia. That program is now in the process of establishing native forests and restoring streams on two former mines totaling over 5,000 acres. Our native plant program will propagate and grow many of the plants for our reforestation projects from seeds and other materials collected from local forests.
Headwaters is expanding our environmental education program in public schools and creating a network to support environmental educators in central Appalachia. We operate Camp Waldo, an environmentally focused summer camp for children in our economically distressed region.
In 2020, Headwaters launched the Appalachian Pollinator Center, an environmental education and research program focused on the ecology of honey bees, native pollinators, and native plants in our region.