News
125 Years
125 years in photos! In 1900, a group of citizen activists banded together to form Sempervirens Club—now Sempervirens Fund—and committed to protecting and nurturing coast redwoods. As we reflect on our legacy and look forward to the future, we are forever thankful to our vast community of supporters like you for your unwavering commitment to protecting redwoods.
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Redwoods Festival | May 18, 2025
Join Sempervirens Fund to celebrate 125 years of protecting redwoods in the Santa Cruz Mountains! Hosted among the redwoods at the historic Roaring Camp, our first-ever Redwoods Festival on May 18, 2025 will celebrate the redwoods with supporters like you and feature live music, train rides, hiking tours, food trucks, and other family fun!
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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.
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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.
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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.
Read MoreHonoring Herb Grench
Herb Grench at Windy Hill Open Space Preserve. Sempervirens Fund joins the conservation community in mourning the passing of Herb Grench, a visionary leader whose efforts helped shape the Bay Area’s open space landscape. Herb dedicated his life to protecting the natural world, and his contributions continue to benefit our region’s forests, wildlife, and communities.…
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Sempervirens in Elementis
In her new art series, Sempervirens in Elementis—Latin for ever living in the elements, Sempervirens Fund’s Forest Fellow Jane Kim explores the relationship between redwoods and the elements: water, fire, earth, and air.
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David Cowman joins Sempervirens Fund as Director of Land Stewardship
David Cowman joins Sempervirens Fund as its new, and first-ever, Director of Land Stewardship, signaling the 125-year old organization’s increased emphasis on the restoration and future health of redwood forests in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
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Redwoods and Fog
We know fog when we see it, but what is fog? Fog clouds linger in cool, damp forests, lending an air of mystery and beauty around us, but the mystery is a simple one. Read on to learn about fog and their magical relationship with redwoods.
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Recording Redwoods: Sounds of the Forest
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Field recordist, Thomas Rex Beverly, found an answer to the age-old philosophical question, and so much more, on his quest to capture the sounds of the redwood forest. Among the protected old-growth redwoods of the “Valley of the Giants” at Camp Jones Gulch, Thomas records the subtle sounds of nearly silent spaces. Follow his Curiosity Stories quest to hear the redwood forest as you never have before.
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