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Stories in California

Land of Promise

TNC has turned the business of protecting land into the business of building a future for California.

Ground level view of Carpenter Valley Preserve with grasses and purple flowers.
Land Carpenter Valley Preserve was protected in 2017. It is home to species like the threatened willow flycatcher, bald eagle and black bear. © Elizabeth Carmel/www.TheCarmelGallery.com

Create a network of wildlands across California

PROTECT AND CONNECT WILDLANDS:
Preserve key habitat and fortify a continental network of conservation lands

REWILD LANDSCAPES:
Restore natural systems and the species that depend on them

ESTABLISH LIVING LABORATORIES:
Make The Nature Conservancy’s lands a hub for research, discovery and innovation

Quote: Jason Pelletier

Using our own properties, we develop and test conservation solutions that are scaling across California and beyond.

Land Program Director

Today, the need for conservation has become more urgent than ever. As the most populous state in the union, California’s remaining open spaces are under intense pressure from conversion and development. In addition, ecosystems are being impacted by climatic shifts that have led to prolonged drought, historic flooding, increased megafires and native species die-off.

The good news is, we can do something about it. 

Smoke from the North Complex fire settles over San Francisco.
Wildfire California has seen a frightening increase in catastrophic megafires. Smoke from the North Complex fire settles over San Francisco pictured here. © Christopher Michel
A satellite view of California and the Sierra Nevadas in 2014 during its multiyear drought.
Drought Nature has the power to store carbon and protect against the effects of climate change. A satellite view of California and the Sierra Nevadas in 2014. © NASA
Wildfire California has seen a frightening increase in catastrophic megafires. Smoke from the North Complex fire settles over San Francisco pictured here. © Christopher Michel
Drought Nature has the power to store carbon and protect against the effects of climate change. A satellite view of California and the Sierra Nevadas in 2014. © NASA

Over our 60-year history in California, TNC has helped protect more than a million acres across our state. But protecting land is only part of the equation. On our preserves, we’re using nature-based climate solutions to enhance nature's regenerative powers in the face of megafires, drought and flooding.

At the same time, we're connecting wildlands so that native California species can find the habitat they need as our climate warms. 

View of the Northern boundary of the Tehachapi wildlife corridor near Lake Isabella in the lower Sierra Mountain foothills
Mojave Desert The Northern boundary of the Tehachapi wildlife corridor near Lake Isabella in the lower Sierra Nevada foothills, Mojave Desert, Central California. Linkages like these allow species to migrate in search of food and mates. © Ian Shive

Protect and Connect

TNC currently manages and monitors more than half a million acres of land in California. Much of this abuts and extends the reach of public lands. In addition, we’ve also acquired and transferred more than 300,000 acres to government ownership for the creation of parks and monuments throughout the state.

Our team uses land acquisition and protection as a strategic tool to fight climate change and help species navigate climate impacts. By protecting critical lands, TNC aims to create wildlife corridors, providing species with the ability to move to more suitable habitats as our climate changes.

Climate-ready Land Protection

We are now working to accelerate land acquisitions that help prepare California for a future in the face of climate change.

  • View across a lake with boulders in the foreground and a red mountain in the distance.

    Frog Lake to Carpenter Valley, Northern Sierra Nevada

    Between 2017 and 2020, we worked with the Truckee Donner Land Trust, the Trust for Public Land and the Northern Sierra Partnership to acquire three pristine Sierra properties totaling 4,240 acres: Frog Lake, Carpenter Valley and Carpenter Ridge.

  • Wide landscape view of a vast valley of rolling green hills, with mountains in the far distance, under a blue sky with puffy white clouds.

    Tehachapi Linkage, Southern California

    The Tehachapi Linkage is one of the most essential landscapes for habitat connectivity in California, as it is the only connection between the Sierra Nevada and the mountains of Southern California that run all the way to Baja California.

  • Aerial view of a river cutting through a flat green-and-golden landscape.

    Nobmann Ranch, Lassen Foothills

    TNC has protected more than 100,000 acres in the Lassen Foothills, and in 2020 we acquired the 462-acre Nobmann Ranch. The property abuts our Dye Creek Preserve and connects habitat for the state’s largest migratory deer herd.

  • View of several large logs sticking up out of a small river as they form part of a salmon-habitat restoration project.

    Ten Mile River Estuary, Mendocino County

    Since 2014 TNC has helped to protect approximately 4,140 acres of land along the estuary of the Ten Mile River and implemented large restoration projects to improve habitat for coho salmon and many other rare species.

Rewild

Restoration means improving landscapes by eliminating the key stressors that degrade them. It also means protecting and restoring the key species and natural processes that sustain ecosystems and enhance resilience to climate change. In the Northern Sierra, the restoration of a single preserve is leading to landscape-scale change.

A view over the Sierra Mountains from Moro Rock in Sequoia National Park in California.
Sierra Mountains, California. TNC’s science has shown that restoring a forest’s health will also bolster its resilience to fire and climate change. © Nick Hall

The Road to Restoration in the Sierra

California is not California without the Sierra Nevada. This spectacular mountain range sustains us, inspires us and calls us to action.

A century of fire suppression and unsustainable logging has created dense thickets of small trees and brush where majestic, old-growth forests once stood. Now, fires that should regenerate the forest too often explode into catastrophic megafires that destroy it. Droughts fueled by climate change have made the problem worse.

Our aim is to restore the healthy cycle of frequent, low-intensity fires and the ecological conditions that better resemble the resilient forests that existed prior to the 20th century. The solution is controlled burns and ecological forest thinning to remove small and unhealthy trees so the plants and animals that depend on older forest conditions can thrive. TNC’s science has shown that restoring a forest’s health will also bolster its resilience to fire and climate change.

Megafires (1:56) Reducing the risk of megafires to promote healthier, more resilient forests.

Now, we’re bringing powerful partners to the table, targeting restoration across nine million acres of Sierra forest. 

Two things set this work apart from previous efforts: the geographic scale of restoration and the diversity of partnerships. We’re bringing together federal and state agencies, water utilities, rural counties, the timber industry, environmental groups and many others to scale up restoration. Fires don’t distinguish between public and private land, so restoration shouldn’t either.

Drawing of tree rings.
Sierra Nevada The ultimate goal of our Sierra strategy is to restore the 9 million-acre core forested area within the mountain range. © Dillon Blue at Big Monocle

Growing Our Impact

2,300 ACRES: INDEPENDENCE LAKE PRESERVE

After establishing the preserve in 2010, we launched our first forest restoration efforts on these lands. To protect the lake’s threatened Lahontan cutthroat trout and reduce the risk of high-severity wildfire, we applied ecological thinning and prescribed burning techniques that are now being scaled across the Sierra. 

28,000 ACRES: FRENCH MEADOWS/AMERICAN RIVER HEADWATERS 

In 2015, TNC brought together state, federal, and local partners-- including the local water utility--for this first-of-its-kind collaboration. The group took a similar restoration approach to the one used at Independence Lake and scaled it in a landscape 10-times larger. 

275,000 ACRES: NORTH YUBA RIVER WATERSHED

Initiated in 2019, this project will be the largest forest restoration of its kind in the Sierra. Using the partnership model we honed at French Meadows, we are working with nine partners to restore one of the most critical watersheds in the region. 

2.4 MILLION ACRES: TAHOE-CENTRAL SIERRA INITATIVE 

Thanks to the scientific credibility and strong partnerships we built up through our work in the Sierra, TNC was invited to work with the U.S. Forest Service to lead the science effort that will guide restoration across the 2.4 million-acre band of forest surrounding Lake Tahoe. 

9 MILLION ACRES: RESTORATION OF SIERRA NEVADA FORESTS 

The ultimate goal for our Sierra strategy is restoring this core forested area within the 30-million-acre mountain range. The Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative is already helping us develop a strategic plan for the entire system. 

TNC’s successes on the ground and in the policy arena are driving land restoration at an unprecedented scale. 

Growing Habitat 

Restoration is not only for our forests. Working lands like farms and ranches play a critical role.

Farming for Bird Habitat in California's Delta (4:21) Located in the heart of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, Staten Island has 8,500 acres of farmland where TNC is researching wildlife-friendly agriculture and irrigation techniques that promote bird conservation in this essential habitat.

About one fourth of the western populations of greater and lesser sandhill cranes call the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta home every winter, as do other migratory birds in this important corridor on the Pacific Flyway. Because of our 8,500-acre Staten Island property, thousands of sandhill cranes have a place to rest in an otherwise vastly developed landscape amidst some of the most expensive and intensively-farmed land in the world. We’re proving that it’s possible and profitable to grow crops and provide essential bird habitat.

The Nature Conservancy has played a large role in protecting the Santa Clara River and its tributaries in Southern California.
Santa Clara River Farmland The Nature Conservancy has played a large role in protecting the Santa Clara River and its tributaries in Southern California. © Melinda Kelley

Partnering with local communities along the Santa Clara River is our best chance for protecting the last free-flowing river in Southern California. The Santa Clara River valley represents a confluence of opportunities to improve livelihoods in disadvantaged communities, secure protection of the floodplain by working with farmers, and restore habitat for the benefit of people and nature. For frontline communities along the Santa Clara River, access to natural space is incredibly limited. 

TNC is expanding opportunities for local communities to immerse in nature. We are also working closely with the farming community to provide floodplain protection and wildlife corridors. Our numerous habitat restoration projects support biodiversity and provide ecosystem services with critical benefits for people, including floodplain connectivity, groundwater recharge, carbon sequestration and wildfire risk reduction.

Stewardship

TNC owns and manages some of the most iconic wildlands in California. From pristine wilderness to working ranches, these holdings represent the enormous breadth of land-use in California. But these lands show more than accomplishments of our past; many are demonstration sites where we test the new practices for tomorrow’s conservation. 

TNC ecologists and partners studying the effects of cattle grazing on California's delicate vernal pool habitats.
Innovation TNC ecologists and partners study the effects of cattle grazing on California's delicate vernal pool habitats in the Central Valley. © Ian Shive

Adapting to Climate Change; Our portfolio of work demonstrates how conservation can provide an integrated solution for reducing climate change and its adverse effects: how better land management can enhance carbon sequestration; how avoiding land conversion can reduce greenhouse gas emissions; how we can facilitate nature’s adaptation to the changing world; and how nature, in turn, can help communities adapt. 

Tech Innovation: Today’s tech revolution has the potential to make conservation dramatically more efficient and effective. From remote sensing to machine learning, we are using emerging technologies to offer powerful ways of streamlining information flows, empowering community scientists, and accelerating the impact of our conservation strategies. 

Translocations: Some species simply can’t move fast enough to keep up with the pace of climate-driven habitat change, or can’t pass through barriers erected by infrastructure development. Others have disappeared from otherwise suitable habitat where their loss impacts other dependent plants and animals. Translocation is a set of tools designed to restore the full complement of animals and plants to landscapes or to enable their movement to more suitable future habitat. We are advancing the science and practice of using translocation to bolster populations of rare species around California. 

Living Laboratories

In the era of extreme global change, we know that simply preserving wild places isn’t enough. We need to turn our preserves into living laboratories where we can develop the tools to help nature adapt and persist. That’s why at our Dangermond and Santa Cruz Island Preserves, we’re bringing together researchers from around the world to collaboratively restore, manage and study these critical systems. 

We’re experimenting with cutting-edge science and technology tools—from novel mapping and eradication techniques for invasive plants to wildlife cameras that are connected to the internet for real-time data collection. We are sharing insights with conservation and science communities around the globe because we know that collaboration leads to lasting solutions.

Trees on a hillside overlooking the ocean.
Dangermond Preserve, CA Oak woodlands overlook the Pacific Ocean at TNC’s Dangermond Preserve. Multiple ecosystems meet in this unique place. © Bill Marr/TNC

Established in 2017, the Dangermond Preserve is a 24,329-acre coastal property stretching from the mountains to the sea at Point Conception near Santa Barbara. With unparalleled opportunities for conservation, research, and education, TNC is managing the landscape to protect connected areas for wildlife to roam, plants to grow, and marine wildlife to thrive. We are also developing a world-class research and environmental education enterprise to inspire future conservation leaders.

Twenty-five miles off the coast of southern California lies Santa Cruz Island, the largest of California’s 8 Channel Islands.
Santa Cruz Island Twenty-five miles off the coast of southern California lies Santa Cruz Island, the largest of California’s eight Channel Islands. © Morgan Heim/Day's Edge Productions

Once on the brink of ecological collapse, Santa Cruz Island is a portrait of what southern California used to be like 200 years ago. Twenty five miles off the coast of Southern California and within the Channel Islands National Park, Santa Cruz Island has been a living laboratory for island restoration and conservation since TNC purchased most of the island in 1978. Our 76% ownership of the island allows our team to practice innovative conservation methods and share lessons learned with other island conservation projects around the world.

The Future of our Landscape

TNC’s Land Program is working to ensure the future of California’s critical landscapes. We are securing a reserve network across California so species have room to roam and adapt to a changing climate; accelerating the restoration of degraded ecosystems to better support biodiversity that benefits people and nature; and transforming our preserves and holdings into world-class living laboratories for conservation innovation. With these strategies, we make progress every day toward protecting the land we love for future generations.

Making 30X30 Count for California

In October 2020, Governor Newsom signed an executive order committing to protect 30% of California’s lands and coastal waters by 2030. This commitment could help our state stem the biodiversity crisis. But where this work touches down matters. Our StoryMap explains.