Regional Habitat Goals
Conserving 50% of the Bay Area’s lands by 2050
Our goal is to facilitate the conservation of 50% of the Bay Area’s lands by 2050 by collaboratively setting regional goals that support local conservation and help achieve state-level strategies.
Conservation Lands Network
The Conservation Lands Network (CLN) is a regional conservation strategy for the San Francisco Bay Area, with a set of goals and science-based decisionmaking tools that support strategic investments in land protection and stewardship. These tools focus conservation in areas that represent the region’s biodiversity and support ecological function across the nearly 5 million acres that comprise the 10 Bay Area counties.
Regional Conservation Goals
Through a peer-reviewed, science-based process, over 100 scientists, researchers, and land conservation practitioners identified regional goals for the conservation of biodiversity habitats.
In Conservation Lands Network 2.0, which was released in 2019, the following five goals were identified:
Conserve 2.5 million acres of priority lands by the year 2050.
Conserve rare, diverse, and irreplaceable landscapes, and manage them for health and resilience.
Conserve core habitats and the lands that connect them, and manage them for permeability, health, and resilience.
Conserve a regional network of streams, wetlands, ponds, seeps, and associated riparian and upland areas, and manage for health and resilience.
Steward all lands to maintain ecological and hydrological processes that support ecosystem function and resilience.
Connecting Urban Biodiversity
In 2022, we launched an exploration that incorporates community science through iNaturalist, and conservation science through the Conservation Lands Network. This project is a collaboration between TOGETHER Bay Area and the California Academy of Sciences, with funding from the State Coastal Conservancy.
This project:
- Leverages professional and community science
- Connects biodiversity and social equity in conservation planning
- Illuminates baylands and uplands interdependencies
Advancing 30×30 and Other State Goals
We need to accelerate our collective efforts to address the climate crisis, and TOGETHER Bay Area members are positioned to deliver nature-based and equity-centered solutions. TOGETHER Bay Area members are working on local projects that can advance the State of California’s goals as outlined in Pathways to 30×30 and other plans.
In the winter of 2022, we surveyed our member organizations and they shared over 110 projects that are ready to implement and which meet the objectives of the Pathways to 30×30 Strategy.
Wildfire Data Working Group
As hundreds of thousands of acres of the Bay Area have burned recently in wildfires, our members are in a constant cycle of research and innovation as we learn to live with fire on the landscape. Collecting and analyzing data to support this paradigm shift is key. The Wildfire Data Working Group (WDWG) is focused on regional coordination of data collected before, during, and after wildfires for informed decision making by land management organizations and agencies. TOGETHER Bay Area convenes this working group of data compilers to learn from one another, share information, and build our regional understanding of the impacts of fire on the land.
Watch recordings of past sessions here. Contact info: Tom Robinson, [email protected]
Regional Coordination with FLAME
FLAME is a working group focused on connecting professionals working on fuels reduction projects to prevent catastrophic wildfire. Implementation projects include large biomass removal, invasive species management, and returning prescribed fire to the landscape. This group is all about implementation.
Since most wildfire-related topics have a planning and data side and an implementation side, the Wildfire Data Working Group and FLAME work in partnership to better serve a broad range of wildfire-related positions by efficiently moving forward a common agenda.
Contact info: Tatiana Manzanillo, [email protected]; Alejandro Anasal, [email protected]
News & Announcements
Calling All Bay Area Conservation Data Compilers
Member Spotlight: Tending the Forest with Fire
Member Spotlight: Building Climate Resilience at Bivista Ridge Ranch
Resources
The Bay Area Greenprint
The Bay Area Greenprint is a tool that reveals the multiple benefits of natural and agricultural lands, empowering users to inform land use and infrastructure decisions with better data. The Bay Area Greenprint identifies, maps, and measures the values that nature contributes to the Bay Area ecosystem, the economy, and local and regional communities.
The Bay Area Greenprint is a collaboration of The Nature Conservancy, TOGETHER Bay Area, American Farmland Trust, Greenbelt Alliance, and GreenInfo Network. Funding provided by the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and the Stanford University’s Natural Capital Project.