The Cascadia Community College/University of Washington, Bothell campus received top honors in the National Wildlife Federation’s Chill Out: Campus Solutions to Global Warming competition. The campus won the category of Habitat Restoration for the campus’ 58-acre urban-wetlands restoration project.

Winners will be officially announced April 16 in a nationwide Web cast, broadcast to participating colleges and universities. Cascadia will be hosting a Chill Out viewing party at 4 p.m. in room 360.

The campus wetlands restoration project is renowned for its scope and success. It is one of the largest urban-wetland restorations in the Pacific Northwest. Years of careful maintenance have turned a former farm into a viable ecosystem for fish, birds, insects and native plants. Ensuring the health of the wetlands is tied to the way the rest of the campus is managed, pesticides are banned from campus, storm runoff is carefully controlled and filtered, and use of over-polluting landscaping equipment has been curtailed.

The Chill Out program is in its second year. Previous winners include schools that have built large solar-power instillations, converted to geothermal energy or taken other dramatic steps to reduce their carbon output.