In 1900, your fellow Sempervirens Fund supporters launched the redwoods conservation movement. Join us throughout 2025 to reflect on your 125 year legacy of protecting redwoods in the Santa Cruz Mountains to help ensure redwoods remain “sempervirens”—always green.
Chronodiversity in Redwood Forests
Among the hallmarks of healthy redwood forests are trees of varying ages growing and thriving together. Achieving this diversity of ages, or chronodiversity, can improve old-growth conditions, which leads to greater habitat diversity—two essential outcomes for redwoods to thrive in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Read on to learn about the importance of chronodiveristy in coast redwood forests.
Why Cut Redwoods?
More than a decade ago, Sempervirens Fund was confronted with a choice: do we actively manage the forests we protect to improve their health, or do we continue to protect the redwoods as we have for more than a century and allow nature to heal on its own timeline? Active management to restore the forest would include the need to cut down trees for the benefit of the forest. With the increasing urgency to help redwoods recover from past human impacts and prepare for accelerating climate changes ahead, we collaborated with Bay Nature Magazine and author Audrea Lim to look at the shift in our redwood revolution and explore the outcomes.
Growing Old-Growth
An old-growth redwood is huge. One of the largest living things to ever grace the planet. And their size isn’t just impressive, it’s important. In the Santa Cruz Mountains very few old-growth redwoods remain, but you’re helping to grow the old-growth of tomorrow, today. Together, we’re restoring redwood forests faster for the trees, for wildlife, for the fight against climate change, and for future generations.
Our Vision
We believe wild and thriving redwood forests can flourish again from Silicon Valley to the Pacific Ocean. With your help, we can establish a large, interconnected, and protected network of healthy trees and streams, stretching across public and private lands. Learn more about our vision.
Our Work
Healthy, connected coast redwoods ensure vibrant habitat, clean air and water, and climate resilience. Your support purchases, restores, and safeguards redwood forests in the Santa Cruz Mountains, ensuring they will never be developed, degraded, or destroyed. Learn more about how we work.
Most people glimpse their first redwood in a public park. Your support expands our great local redwood parks, sharing new destinations with the public, and helping make the land more accessible and welcoming for everyone. Discover the redwoods of the Santa Cruz Mountains.
The redwood forests we protect are strategically identified for their ecological and conservation values. Many of these lands serve as critical habitat corridors. And redwoods are resilient allies in the fight to address our climate crisis. Explore Redwoods Science.
We work in the forests, repairing and restoring the delicate balance of life, protecting and healing the best habitat. You can volunteer with us—helping tend to the forests—and you can fund the stewardship of the redwood forests you cherish. Learn more about caring for our lands.
