2023 News: What You’ve Made Possible
photo by Orenda Randuch
2023 News
NEWS: Sempervirens Fund Launches Trails Prescription Program for the Santa Cruz Mountains
Sempervirens Fund's Trails Prescription Program, also known as Trails Rx, encourages people to explore the outdoors by promoting the health and wellness benefits associated with spending time in nature. Trails Rx gives clinicians and patients new options to turn a recommendation for time in nature into a specific ‘prescription’ for where best to go outdoors...
Introduction to Forest Bathing
Forest bathing, or “Shinrin-yoku” as it's called in Japan where the practice was founded, is a way of immersing your senses in nature that has proven benefits for our physical and mental well being. Time in nature can boost our immune systems and creativity, settle our minds, and lower our stress levels. But how do...
ParksRx and You
Parks prescriptions, or ParksRx, is a movement based on the fundamental idea that spending time in nature is good for your health. In California’s Bay Area, most counties host a ParksRx program, often connecting parks and public health departments. They provide resources for clinicians and doctors to recommend, like reminding a patient to exercise, spending...
Santa Cruz Sandhills
Among redwoods in the Santa Cruz mountains you can find a habitat so rare it doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world: the Santa Cruz sandhills. Species uniquely adapted to its soil cling to their disappearing habitat long interwoven with redwoods. And you could be their best hope for survival. Explore the ancient rarities of...
Help Rebuild State Parks
Help California State Parks rebuild Big Basin, Butano, and Año Nuevo State Parks and protect the region's incredible biodiversity devastated by the 2020 CZU Fire. Stay tuned for the next step to ask state leadership to rebuild State Parks and protect priority lands in the Santa Cruz mountains.
Living with Trees: A Historian’s Perspective for the Future
Like history, science is record keeping. By looking at trees through both human perspectives of science and culture, across time and the globe, Dr. Daniel Lewis, author, historian, and curator at one of the world’s most renowned research libraries, looks for how we might save trees to save ourselves.
Save Climate Funding in State Budget
With increasingly severe fires, floods, and sea level rise affecting the state each year, California should be rapidly investing to deploy climate mitigation measures and strengthen its resiliency as soon as possible. Ask your legislators to act on a climate bond in 2024.
NEWS: Sempervirens Fund Acquires Properties for New Entrance to Big Basin Redwoods State Park; AB 2103 Advances in State Legislature
Sempervirens Fund announces key Saddle Mountain acquisitions for conservation and future Big Basin visitor services; and announces that AB 2103 (Pellerin), which prioritizes land acquisition at Big Basin following CZU fire, moves forward in the state legislature.
California Climate Bond
With increasingly severe fires, floods, and sea level rise affecting the state each year, California should be rapidly investing to deploy climate mitigation measures and strengthen its resiliency as soon as possible. Ask your legislators to act on a climate bond in 2024.
America the Beautiful
The vision for protecting and restoring 30% of America’s land and waters by 2030 has a ways to go. Urge state leadership to prioritize conserving and restoring lands, waters, and wildlife.
NEWS: Sempervirens Fund welcomes three new members to its board of directors
Juan Benitez, Marimo Berk, and Brad Lewis join our board of directors to help lead the conservation efforts of California’s first and oldest land trust.
Lichens
You may know redwoods hold mini ecosystems on their branches, but did you know a lichen on just one of those branches is a micro ecosystem of its own? Climb into the hidden biodiversity of redwood forests with lichenologist and curator of The Lichenarium at Santa Barbara Botanic Garden Dr. Rikke Reese Næsborg.
World Wildlife Day: Take the Poll
Celebrate World Wildlife Day by voting for your favorite creature—from banana slugs to Townsend big-eared bats—in the redwood forests you help us protect.
Fungi of the Forest: Meet the Mushrooms of San Vicente Redwoods
Mycologist and researcher Maya Elson teamed up with photographer Orenda Randuch for a fungi photo essay to help us meet the mushrooms hard at work at San Vicente Redwoods. Learn identification tips to recognize mushrooms above ground, and their critical work underground to help the forest recover from fire, drought, flood, and human impacts in...
Sempervirens Fund permanently protects 120 acres in Santa Cruz mountains’ Upper Zayante watershed
Late in 2023, Sempervirens Fund permanently protected 120 acres in Santa Cruz mountains’ Upper Zayante watershed. The Isabel Upani conservation easement, donated to Sempervirens Fund by private landowners, guarantees protection of the more than 67 acres of redwood forest.
Awakening of the Silent Forest
See the resurgence of forest life after the 2020 CZU Fire through photographer Ian Bornarth’s lens. Over three years, Bornarth visited Santa Cruz mountain redwood forests every few weeks to capture their recovery and has captivated us with documentation of their resilience and signs of new beginnings.
Rachel Dann joins Sempervirens Fund as Director of Government Relations
Contact: Matt Shaffer, 415-609-2750, mshaffer@sempervirens.org Santa Cruz, Calif. (Dec. 19, 2023) – Sempervirens Fund, California’s first and oldest land trust, has hired Rachel Dann, a key aide to many notable politicians in the Monterey Bay Area, to serve as the organization’s first-ever director of government relations. Dann will develop and advance the organization’s conservation agenda….
Close Encounter: Monitoring Marbled Murrelets
An endangered elusive, young seabird was found on the ground in one of its harshest habitats–the Santa Cruz mountains–where they and the redwoods they rely on are both at the end of their range. Read the story of this rare encounter and how monitoring marbled murrelets in the redwoods can support these dwindling species where...
Indigenous Stewardship at San Vicente Redwoods: Past, Present, and Future
After the CZU Fire an opportunity arose to study post-fire effects, survey a baseline of reemerging plants, and help Amah Mutsun Tribal Band members look for eco-archaeological clues to how the Awaswas-speaking peoples lived on and cared for this land. Dive into their research at San Vicente Redwoods as they look into Indigenous Stewardship of...
More to Explore
- See the highlights of what supporters like you made possible last year in your Impact Report
- Help protect the forest with a Climate bond for California in 2024
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