1953

To serve our community by creating, managing and maintaining a Project and Programs in open space.
To ensure protection and understanding of sensitive habitat and wildlife and birds and how to be as a person in such areas.
To offer opportunities in volunteering and education to help further careers and studies in conservation.
To give hope and inspiration to primarily volunteer, organized groups for community service.
To contribute to conservation awareness and education for climate change action.

We have a 20-year history of organizing as a community group, then incorporating as a nonprofit organization, successfully opposing and stopping a large residential development that would have destroyed longstanding habitat and open space, and then advocating for an additional several years to achieve an over $1,000,000 grant of public open space sales tax funds to acquire and conserve the 11.22 acre Paula Lane open space property in West Petaluma, CA. We have a record of substance, doing our homework, persevering in the face of insurmountable obstacles and odds, navigating the politics of land use and politics in the area where our organization exists, and then creating a High Use-Low Impact Project design for open space properties - honoring natural features and wildlife and being people in that context, learning to volunteer, restore and enhance habitat, grow food sources sustainably - all in the context of people being second to habitat and the creatures living in their natural home. Our story has been featured in several media publications. And our strategy remains the same: All volunteer, dedicated community service, a life-time commitment for some of our Board members and reps, and cultivating and maintaining a large network of supporters, conservationists with similar goals, and service providers.

Our organization's model and approach is our strategy. All volunteer, carefully managed by a small Board of Directors, with a broad network to identify goals, work toward those goals, achieve the goals, and also address any challenges, remaining grounded and moving through challenges, to be of service. Our network includes individuals of diverse ethnic and sociocultural backgrounds and has always been a very important part of our composition.

We created an organizational model and also a Project Design for sensitive habitat and open space areas of High Use-Low Impact.
We identified and documented to date 3 wildlife corridors.
We have documented species sightings and habitat areas for American Badger in our geographic area.
We continue this research and our activities.
We focus on substance and contributing to conservation and our Natural world in areas where such information is not available.
We have many associates with a variety of experiences for collaborating and communicating, and we have a Naturalist who is uniquely experienced with 20 years of field study and observations, as well as organizational development and management experience.

We successfully opposed a large development 2000-2006 where the open space property and habitat are now protected forever.
We successfully achieved an over $1,000,000 grant to acquire and conserve the land that had been proposed for development.
We created and have implemented 80% of a High Use-Low Impact Project design at this property; we are advocating for a title transfer from the City of Petaluma, current title holder, to have a new partner, dedicated to conservation, so we can complete our Project work and expand volunteer and education programs. Politics have become involved, and a dysfunctional City government and title holder, desiring that our effort be thwarted now, and we are not accepting this and continue to work toward completing what has been intended and planned.
The City of Petaluma has also allowed negative impacts to habitat areas and species, and has a low to nonexistent conservation standard. This is another motivation for us to continue to encourage a transfer of property title with a new partner.
We have weathered several challenges in the last 8 years in a community with politics that can be brutal. This experience has resulted in being fortified in our mission, with our supporters, to continue on our path and continue research and education.
We are members of a large San Francisco Bay Area nonprofit coalition to advocate for open space conservation and prioritize volunteer and job opportunities for persons in underserved communities and of diverse racial and cultural backgrounds. We are very dedicated to this coalition and we maintain many positive relationships outside the City of Petaluma, as we continue our advocacy and efforts for justice in our own community and actually at the very property we are responsible for saving several years ago.