When most people think of the Chesapeake Bay, they picture the water itself wide open stretches of the Bay, tidal creeks, marshes, boats, blue crabs, and waterfowl. But the Chesapeake is much bigger than the shoreline.
The Bay is the heart of an enormous watershed, a connected system of forests, farms, towns, wetlands, streams, and rivers where water ultimately makes its way toward the Chesapeake.
That connection is important because what happens hundreds of miles from the Bay can eventually affect the water, habitat, and wildlife found within it.
It All Flows Downstream
Rain falling on a forest, field, neighborhood, or city doesn't simply disappear. Some soaks into the ground. Some enters small creeks and streams. Those streams join larger waterways, and those waterways eventually become the rivers that feed the Chesapeake.
Along the way, the condition of the land matters.
Healthy forests and wetlands can help slow and filter water. Streamside vegetation provides habitat and helps protect waterways. Conversely, pollution, excessive sediment, and nutrients entering waterways upstream can eventually affect ecosystems much farther downstream.
The Chesapeake is therefore not simply a body of water.
It is the product of everything connected to it.
Many Rivers. One Bay.
Twelve major rivers helped inspire the name 12 Rivers: the Susquehanna, Potomac, James, Rappahannock, York, Patuxent, Patapsco, Choptank, Nanticoke, Pocomoke, Wicomico, and Chester.
Each begins somewhere different. Each passes through different landscapes and communities. Eventually, their waters become part of the same system.
That idea represents something larger than twelve rivers.
It represents connection.
The health of the Chesapeake depends on the health of the lands and waterways throughout its watershed and on the people willing to care for them.
Land. Water. Wildlife.
Conservation issues are often separated into categories, but nature rarely works that way.
Protecting forests can help protect streams. Protecting streams can improve aquatic habitat. Healthy wetlands can provide habitat for fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and countless other species.
Land affects water.
Water affects wildlife.
And each is connected to the communities that call the watershed home.
That's why 12 Rivers approaches conservation through three areas Land Conservation, Water Conservation, and Wildlife Conservation while recognizing that protecting one often helps protect the others.
Protect What Connects Us
12 Rivers was created around a simple idea: people who love the Chesapeake watershed should have another way to help protect it.
Through the apparel we create, the stories we share, and the conservation organizations we support, we hope to build a community connected by stewardship of this remarkable place.
Because protecting the Chesapeake doesn't begin at the Bay.
It begins everywhere the water does.