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Community Corner

'Living Landscape' Aims to Protect Ecosystems Regionally

The new initiative is a coalition of groups working together to preserve the diversity of natural life from the mid-Peninsula to the South Bay.

Five local conservation organizations in the northern coastal California region have joined forces to protect the beautiful natural open space in our backyard with the Living Landscape Initiative

The new initiative, announced Mar. 10, aims to protect 80,000 acres of natural open land and parks in Silicon Valley over the next 20 years. This includes the redwood forests in and north of Cupertino to Menlo Park and westward through the Santa Cruz Mountains and the complex ecosystems of the Peninsula baylands and South Bay region.

“Setting a large-scale vision for how nature can survive in the Silicon Valley region is the only way we can secure a viable, sustainable future for the diversity of life here,” said Audrey Rust, the president of initiative member group Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST). POST was headquartered in Menlo Park for 30 years before its move to Palo Alto nearly four years ago.

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“There is a window of opportunity to get this work done now. We must do right by the land and seize that chance before it’s too late,” said Rust.

The reason a collaborative effort between the five conservation groups is so essential is because land conservation doesn't end at county lines.

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As long-time POST donor and pro-bono lawyer Brad O'Brien puts it, “Land conservation is regional. The areas that comprise (POST projects)–south of San Francisco and north of Gilroy—are really an integrated ecological system,” said O'Brien.

POST partnered with Save the Redwoods League  and The Nature Conservancy in San Francisco, the Los Altos-based Sempervirens Fund, and the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County to form the new initiative.

The initiative will be funded in part by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation of Los Altos and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation of Palo Alto, which donated an initial $15 million grant for the cooperative initiative.

The Moore Foundation aims to create momentum and encourage other organizations to donate to the effort. The Initiative, which hopes to raise $50 million in grants in the next three years, will purchase the land with the grants in order to conserve it.

“If you want to impact conservation of any part of it, you have to think about what's happening to the whole.” O'Brien explained how, for example, the natural migration of wildlife is not restricted to San Mateo or Santa Clara County, but crosses the entire region.

It can be easy to forget in technology-driven Silicon Valley that the natural beauty of Huddart Park in Woodside or Big Basin Redwoods State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains are only a short drive away, but we must remember to protect these areas, said O'Brien.

Follow the Living Landscape Initiative's progress on their website, www.livinglandscapeinitiative.org.

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