Join us in celebrating Sierra Foothill Conservancy’s 30th Anniversary and the many supporters, volunteers, landowners, and partners who have helped weave the tapestry of conservation in this region for three dynamic decades. Because of your commitment, SFC has successfully conserved over 67,000 acres of natural lands, more than doubling our acres-conserved in the last decade alone! These protected lands will endure as a lasting gift of open space, healthy habitat, clean air, fresh water, and connection to nature for generations to come.

In 1996, a small group of volunteers gathered together and conceived a vision of conservation to save our foothill lands, and Sierra Foothill Conservancy was formed. Our momentum continues to build – expanding and deepening our programs over the years, increasing the pace and scale of conservation, and responding to the changing needs of our region through connected corridors of conserved lands and large-scale land stewardship. Since the time of our formation as an all-volunteer organization, we’ve grown into professional leaders in land conservation. Part of SFC’s growth and durability comes from holding ourselves to the highest standards. We first took on the rigorous task of becoming a nationally accredited land trust in 2014 through the Land Trust Alliance, ensuring that the standards and practices of the organization are sound and will stand the test of time. With only 37% of land trusts being accredited, we’re happy to report that we have met the high standards to be awarded accreditation for more than a decade, and this year we have successfully renewed our national accreditation once more.

This year SFC completed two strategic Conservation Easements, the Wander N Ranch and Ben Hur Ranch. The Wander N Ranch CE (1,210-acres) project utilized partial competitive grant funding through the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s (CAL FIRE) Forest Legacy Program. The ranch is located in SFC’s Madera-Mariposa Focus Area and offers a strategic effort to protect and connect private and public lands to create a corridor of conserved lands along the Madera-Mariposa County line for the regional benefit of working ranches, biodiversity, native plants, wildlife, water, and historic and cultural resource protection. This project builds off the 1,030 acres of Wander N Phase I (previously protected by SFC in 2023) and serves as a critical first step in catalyzing land conservation directly along the Chowchilla River watershed upstream from Eastman Lake.

The 857-acre Ben Hur Ranch CE is located directly south of the Larrick Ranch Conservation Easement (the historic 4,598-acre “Quick Ranch” conserved by SFC in 2020). SFC conserved the ranch using competitive grant funding awarded through the Sierra Nevada Conservancy’s Strategic Land Conservation Grant Program. Protection of this property creates a 5,455-acre connected conservation corridor of expansive rolling grasslands along Ben Hur Road in Mariposa County. It is a crucial piece in SFC’s landscape-level strategy to forever protect the 30,000-acre Madera-Mariposa Focus Area, establishing a continuous tract of protected lands across important grasslands and oak woodland that span the shared Mariposa-Madera County line.

Collaborating with local landowners on conservation easement projects is a critical element in accomplishing SFC’s mission to protect and restore foothill lands. A conservation easement is a voluntary agreement that allows a landowner to define the type or amount of development on their property while retaining private ownership of the land, and we are grateful to these partners for the wisdom and commitment they bring to SFC’s work.

In SFC’s efforts to address the immense and urgent needs of our landscapes, our Land Stewardship Program has evolved from the early days of fundamental Preserve management and conservation easement monitoring, to landscape level, programmatic restoration projects. SFC has the privilege of managing an expanding portfolio of 7,666 acres on ten Preserves and working with partnering landowners to uphold the conservation value of 55,413 acres of conservation easements. Each property has its own unique environment and is host to a diversity of plants and wildlife. Through adaptive management, SFC stewards our Preserves and works with landowners to protect critical habitat for both common and special status species. As we safeguard important ecosystem services such as watershed protection, regenerative agriculture, biodiversity conservation, and carbon sequestration, we ensure the health and sustainability of the natural landscapes and future of our communities.

SFC is working with partners throughout our region of service to build more resilient landscapes by implementing native plant restoration projects on nearly 50 combined acres of conserved lands. On our McKenzie Preserve in Fresno County, SFC has been working on a restoration planting project since 2021 as part of mitigation work for the Auberry Roundabout and Prather Curve Caltrans projects. This spring SFC and Caltrans conducted a comprehensive inventory of the restoration planting project, including monitoring of an additional 140 plants added last fall. This project offsets the impacts of necessary roads projects at a 3:1 ratio and enhances the biodiversity of the McKenzie Preserve. On the Stookey Preserve, SFC staff and volunteers are conducting maintenance and caretaking of 23 native plant species that were installed as part of the Preserve’s large restoration effort last fall, funded by the California Wildlife Conservation Board and Point Blue Conservation Science. We are happy to report that year one’s growth exceeded our expectations and many of the pollinator plants are beginning to flower! This spring plant maintenance also continued throughout the Mariposa Creek Parkway restoration site funded by the California Wildlife Conservation Board. The project’s 1600 native plants are growing so well that many will soon be self- sustaining, with an incredible 97% success rate! These restoration projects are critical to the success of SFC’s mission to conserve land and steward those lands for the benefit of our plant, animal, and human communities.

SFC is in the planning phase and will soon begin on the ground implementation of the nearly $7 million dollar CAL FIRE Forest Health project, the largest restoration grant in the organization’s history. This project will be implemented to restore forest health and protect headwaters of the Chowchilla River, addressing some of the most imperative wildfire risk and reforestation needs on SFC’s conserved lands. This phase of the project includes finalization of permitting, contracting, initial site prep, and beginning forest health and fuels management treatments on these important properties located in the wildland urban interface. This forest health project directly responds to the need for remediation in the 2022 Oak Fire burn scare and establishes more fire resilience in the surrounding landscape. This is an example of SFC’s responsiveness to the changing conditions on our conserved lands.

An additional evolving aspect of our deepening commitment to land stewardship is the growth and expansion of SFC’s Rangeland Management Program. Since its establishment in 2010, SFC’s programmatic impact has grown and evolved, and with the help of our partners and funders SFC now implements regenerative grazing across 5,000 acres of SFC conserved lands.  Ten years of data have shown the benefits of regenerative grazing as we continue to meet the ecological objectives of soil health, wildlife habitat enhancement, and native plant species conservation. In the coming year, the Rangeland Management Program will expand our activities with healthy soil building practices through our ongoing California Department Food and Agriculture (CDFA) Healthy Soils Project taking place on SFC’s Martin Preserve in Fresno County.  As an established leader in conservation grazing in California rangelands, SFC will share this knowledge and conservation ethic with other land trusts, agencies, and landowners through dynamic Rangeland programming. Hosting agri-nature field days, Rancher-to-Rancher programming, participating in conference presentations, consulting, and grant-funded studies helps SFC meet the goal of increasing the knowledge and value of regenerative agriculture in our communities as well as demonstrating practices for producers to replicate on their own ranches.

With your support, SFC is rising to the call to meet the needs of our communities with creative and impactful land-based solutions. Since inception, SFC has prioritized offering educational programming and recreational access to our conserved lands to help cultivate present and future stewards of the land and build a strong conservation ethic in our communities.

This year saw many exciting developments in our education and outreach program as we build on the over 1,000 youth served by SFC throughout our region. SFC was recently awarded significant and highly competitive program funding through the California Natural Resource Agency’s Youth Community Access grant program; our proposal was one of only 108 projects selected out of more than 450 applicants statewide. The project will expand youth field trip programming on SFC’s McKenzie Preserve for Fresno and Madera youth, establish robust youth education internship opportunities, engage Tribal youth from Table Mountain Rancheria on the ancestral route through the McKenzie Preserve, provide cultural workshops led by the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation to promote intergenerational Traditional knowledge sharing for Tribal youth, and expand nature-based programming for vulnerable youth in Mariposa in collaboration with our Ethos Youth partners.

SFC has expanded our conservation and stewardship model to promote greater collaboration with our Tribal partners throughout the region as a critical element of a holistic approach to tending our conserved lands.  These collaborative efforts are returning the stewardship of first peoples and their thousands of years of knowledge of the land while reinstating indigenous values and Traditional knowledge into the planning, restoration, and stewardship of the land for the collective healing and sustainability of our communities into the future.

SFC is collaborating on forest health projects in partnership with the Southern Sierra Burn Cooperative (SSBC) – a partnership with Big Sandy Rancheria, Cold Springs Rancheria, the Dunlap Band of Mono Indians, and North Fork Rancheria, landowners, practitioners, and researchers in Fresno and Madera Counties.  These projects provide training to the local community with a specific emphasis on Tribal member workforce development with the objectives of wildfire risk reduction, water conservation, and the enhancement of Tribal cultural resources such as food-producing plants and basketmaking materials. This collaboration has been instrumental in realizing on the ground work for SFC’s co-ownership and co-management of the Haslett Basin Preserve with Cold Springs Rancheria.

Our project partners from the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation have made great progress on the Mariposa Creek Parkway restoration project this year, helping to clear encroaching invasive plants and annual grasses while developing Tribal workforce through their Me-Suh Tribal Stewardship Crew.  SFC was honored to participate in the recent documentary, Wakaalətti’: Our Creek – Restoring Land, Healing Community, created by filmmaker Amanda Law. The film documents the restoration efforts on the Mariposa Creek Parkway and showcases the ecological and cultural revitalization of this critical riparian landscape through the collaborative work of the Tribe, SFC, and Mariposa County. We thank the Mariposa County Arts Council for sponsoring the film and the Sierra Nevada Conservancy for their contributions to its funding. We invite you to visit SFC’s YouTube channel to view the documentary.

Your investment in SFC’s last 30 years has yielded a legacy of conservation that will last for generations, and our work is far from finished. With your help, we can strengthen these roots and ensure the next 30 years are even more impactful. Consider donating today and join us in building a lasting legacy of clean air and water, healthy working lands, restored habitat, and thriving communities. Together, we can protect an additional 2,700 acres of working lands and wild habitats in the coming year—bringing SFC’s total conserved lands to over 69,500 acres. These protected lands safeguard clean water, wildlife, and open spaces for generations to come. As our work expands, so does the need for your support. Your gift today ensures we can keep pace with this remarkable momentum and continue saving natural lands now and forever.