A rare wetland. A critical moment.
For the Fen!
Help protect Okanogan County’s largest peat wetland.
Campaign deadline: August 31, 2026
Why Bonaparte Meadows Matters
A rare peat wetland at the headwaters of Bonaparte Creek, storing carbon, holding water, and anchoring a complex, thriving web of life.
How Your Gift Helps
One chance to keep this rare peat wetland whole, protect it forever, and begin to heal it.
Keeping Land Connected
Protecting Bonaparte Meadows keeps its peat wetland, meadow, and forest connected as one complex, functioning ecosystem.
Protect Bonaparte Meadows
A Rare Opportunity
The landscape
One of the region’s most significant wetland conservation opportunities
Bonaparte Meadows sits high in the Okanogan Highlands, where Bonaparte Creek winds through a broad, open wetland before flowing into its narrower channel to support the Okanogan watershed.
The 745-acre property includes approximately 260 acres of peat wetland and contains Okanogan County’s largest known peat wetland.
Located below Mount Bonaparte and near Bonaparte Lake, the property is home to a calcareous fen, a rare wetland fed by mineral-rich groundwater. Calcareous fens are among the rarest wetland types in Washington and the United States.
Water on the landscape
Natural water storage in a changing climate
The meadow’s deep peat soils hold, filter, and slowly release water across the landscape. As the Columbia Basin is increasingly affected by drought and warming temperatures, this natural water storage plays an important role in long-term watershed and wildfire resilience.
Bonaparte Creek flows out of the wetland and is a headwater tributary of the Okanogan River. Protecting the entire property and restoring areas of past peat extraction can improve wetland hydrology and help support cold-water flows into the creek, which hosts salmon and steelhead.
An entire ecosystem
Rare plants, wildlife, and connected habitat
Bonaparte Meadows supports rare plants and plant communities adapted to its unusual wetland conditions. It also provides habitat for wildlife species prioritized for conservation in Washington, such as those listed here, among many others.
As the campaign progresses, part of the focus has been working with scientists and the community to survey and record a growing list of species that rely on the wetland and connected habitat. We recently completed compiling and verifying our bird surveys, which recorded 141 different species. Additional ongoing studies include butterflies, amphibians, bats, and mammals.
Together, these species reflect a larger, interconnected ecosystem that depends on the wetland, meadow, forest edge, open water, and upland habitats found across the property.
As a former USFS Tonasket District Wildlife Biologist, I know that the Bonaparte meadow ecosystem and its ecological richness, and know it is absolutely worth the energy it is going to take to protect it.
In a region with dwindling water available, much of that water rapidly warming, and in one of the most important salmonid watersheds in North America, Bonaparte Meadow and Creek serve an outsized ecological role, even before considering carbon sequestration and the biodiversity of terrestrial flora and fauna.
Not only are fens of this type vanishingly rare on the Western landscape, but they are also among the most biodiverse and carbon-dense landforms per acre that we know of globally. From a riverine perspective, Bonaparte Meadows serves a truly critical function in delivering cold, clean water to this headwater stream that hosts salmon and steelhead.
Help protect Bonaparte Meadows
By supporting For the Fen!, you can help Okanogan Land Trust acquire, permanently protect, and begin restoring Bonaparte Meadows, keeping this rare landscape intact for water, wildlife, plant life, and generations to come.
Explore Bonaparte Meadows through videos about its rare peat wetland, wildlife, headwaters, scientific research, restoration potential, and the community effort working to protect it.
Explore Bonaparte Meadows.
Looking for press releases, campaign background, photography, or downloadable media resources? Visit the Bonaparte Meadows Media Hub.
The match has been met
$300,000 unlocked for the fen!
Thanks to an extraordinary response from the community, the full $150,000 matching challenge has been met.
Together, donors unlocked $300,000 for the effort to purchase, permanently protect, and restore Bonaparte Meadows.
Help carry Bonaparte Meadows across the finish line.Thank you. Every gift, share, conversation, and act of support helped meet this challenge and move the campaign closer to its $1.5 million goal. The campaign continues through August 31, 2026.
photography: Karen Edwards
How to Help
Bonaparte Meadows is one of Eastern Washington’s most unique calcareous peat fens — a rare wetland fed by mineral-rich groundwater that stores carbon, holds water late into summer, and supports plants found almost nowhere else.
We have until August 31, 2026 to raise $1.5 million to bring Bonaparte Meadows into permanent protection by Okanogan Land Trust, keeping this rare peat fen intact forever and supporting its long-term care.
Both one-time and monthly gifts can be made using the “Donate Online” button below.
photo: PNTA
Leadership Gifts & Partnerships
Help Secure Funding for Bonaparte Meadows
Bonaparte Meadows is among a handful of calcareous peat fens in Washington State, a rare groundwater-fed wetland that accumulates peat over millennia, quietly stores carbon, buffers water supplies, and supports rare plant communities—an ecosystem that, once damaged, cannot realistically be restored.
Leadership gifts of $10,000 or more can help unlock matching opportunities and bring Bonaparte Meadows closer to permanent protection before the August 31, 2026 deadline.
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Bonaparte Meadows News + Updates
Help close the gap for Bonaparte Meadows
The matching challenge has been met, but the campaign is not over. Help us reach the $1.5 million needed to purchase and permanently protect Bonaparte Meadows.
$1,500,000 to go
0% of goal
Campaign deadline: August 31, 2026