Save Mount Diablo

Save Mount Diablo's mission is to preserve Mount Diablo's peaks, surrounding foothills and watersheds through land acquisition and preservation strategies designed to protect the mountain's natural beauty, biological diversity and historic and agricultural heritage; enhance our area's quality of life; and provide recreational opportunities consistent with protection of natural resources.

Land Acquisition and Preservation Goals – Roughly 60,000 acres of land in and around Mount Diablo are at risk of being lost to development forever. Save Mount Diablo's vision is to permanently preserve land with high conservation values within our area of interest, which has been expanded to include the Diablo Range. The 200-mile Diablo Range stretches south across 12 counties, between Highway 101 and Highway 5. The Diablo Range includes more than 5,400 square miles of which only 24% is protected, the remainder threatened by increasing urbanization, fossil fuel and alternative energy development, wildfires, and climate change. For that reason, we have begun an expansion of our activities. While primarily focused on protecting the remaining important threatened open space properties north of Interstate 580, we’ve expanded our land acquisition activities south to Corral Hollow, will consider accepting land or easements as far south as the Alameda-Santa Clara County line, and will conduct related preservation and advocacy activities in the seven northern Diablo Range counties—Contra Costa, Alameda, San Joaquin, Santa Clara, Stanislaus, Merced, and San Benito.

Advocacy, Land Use Planning and Public Policy Goals – When land has high conservation value and is threatened, but cannot be preserved through acquisition, we strive to defend it using strategies for land-use planning and advocacy. We aspire to create beneficial policy at the local, regional, state and federal level that enhances land protection and climate change adaptation.

Stewardship Goals – After Save Mount Diablo acquires land in order to turn it over to a park agency or preserve it through a conservation easement, we endeavor to restore any degraded habitat and to protect natural, agricultural and cultural resources. Our objective, simply stated, is to manage the properties in our care for the benefit of wildlife and people, now and well into the future.

Public Education and Communication Goals –- Everyone benefits from being outdoors, and good stewardship of land grows when people directly connect with nature, form a relationship with it, and then want to take care of it. Save Mount Diablo seeks to build connections between people, the land and our organization in order to protect open space in the Mount Diablo area for generations to come. We also aim to inspire communities adjacent to the Mount Diablo area to preserve their surroundings.

Land Acquisition and Preservation Strategies – Save Mount Diablo has developed and pursued a systematic approach to land acquisition. We collaborate with our partners to increase the amount of permanently preserved land with high conservation values within our area of interest. We partner with landowners to preserve their property and to ensure that they receive fair treatment in any transaction aimed at preserving open space. And, we work closely with the park agencies in the area on natural resource issues and long range planning for the entire Mount Diablo region. In the near term, we are focused on expanding the use of conservation easements, through our Conservation Buyer Program, to make a lasting difference in the amount of protected land before it is lost to development forever.

Advocacy, Land Use Planning and Public Policy Strategies – We use land- use planning, policy and advocacy strategies to defend threatened land until it can be permanently preserved. As part of this effort we monitor more than 50 planning commission agendas each week and respond to 50-60 development applications every year, ranging from cell tower applications to large subdivision projects. We also foster relationships across stakeholder groups and conservation organizations and work to build and sustain a broad coalition of supporters, often offering technical advice to community and neighborhood groups regarding preservation of natural lands.

Stewardship Strategies – Acquisition of land is just the first critical step in protecting Mount Diablo's open spaces and natural treasures. Once a property has been acquired, Save Mount Diablo ensures that the land receives the continual attention and care it needs to thrive. To meet these objectives, we train and then lead teams of volunteers to restore degraded streams and terrain, remove debris, monitor plantings, and build and maintain infrastructure and trails. We also foster relationships with partnering landowners, agencies and organizations and provide opportunities for public hikes and other outdoor discoveries on Save Mount Diablo's properties.

Public Education and Communication Goals –-Save Mount Diablo encourages recreation and public enjoyment of Mount Diablo's park lands, consistent with the protection of their natural resources. We educate the public regarding threats to the mountain's flora, fauna, and rugged beauty, and to the history and heritage of the mountain and its surrounding foothills. We deliver enjoyable educational outreach and experiences through volunteer projects, educational programs, initiatives with schools and other partners through our Conservation Collaboration Agreement program, free pubic hikes, research, and other events. We also aim to inspire communities adjacent to the Mount Diablo area to preserve their surroundings through education and outreach programs.

Save Mount Diablo's conservation work is built on public support and sound scientific principles. We base our work on the values of respecting the land, collaborating with others, empowering citizens, and balancing economic growth and livable communities.

Our Board of Directors and staff work effectively to protect and restore Mount Diablo's lands, and are supported by numerous individual donors, local businesses, corporations and foundations. In addition to our staff, our dedicated volunteers are central to our ability to accomplish our mission. Each year we engage hundreds of volunteers who contribute more than 15,000 hours of work.

Equally important is our broad network of strong partnerships. Since its founding, Save Mount Diablo has fostered community coalitions and collaborative relationships among agencies and organizations, business and corporate leaders, labor unions, and community leaders, as well as a wide cross section of local residents.

Save Mount Diablo earned distinctive recognition in 2016 when it was awarded national accreditation by the Land Trust Accreditation Commission. With this honor, Save Mount Diablo joined land trusts nationwide that meet standards for excellence, uphold the public trust, and ensure that their conservation efforts are permanent.

Save Mount Diablo was further honored when Assemblywoman Catharine Baker named us as Assembly District 16 Nonprofit of the Year in California in 2016. Among recipients statewide, Save Mount Diablo was the only land trust chosen for the award.

As a leading force in land conservation in northern California's East Bay region for almost five decades, Save Mount Diablo and its partners have protected more than 110,000 acres on and around Mount Diablo. From a single park in 1971, today more than forty parks and preserves are found on and around Mount Diablo.
Save Mount Diablo completes several acquisition projects each year and works with our agency allies on others. Some projects span years. A good example is our Chaparral Spring acquisition -- the most critical parcel in creating a corridor of protected lands from Mount Diablo State Park to Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve. Save Mount Diablo purchased the 333-acre property in 1994 and 15 years later, with a grant from the Coastal Conservancy, transferred it to East Bay Regional Park District for long term management. Save Mount Diablo continues to evaluate and pursue acquisition projects for future addition to public lands.
Through its Land Use Planning and Advocacy work, Save Mount Diablo has been a key player in striking the balance between economic growth, affordable housing, and open space preservation. The Concord Naval Weapons Station Reuse Plan, for example, which Save Mount Diablo worked on as part of the Community Coalition, ultimately resulted in a plan of 67% of the 5,000 acre area to be preserved as parks and open space. Currently, as one of many efforts, we are championing a mix of open space, trails, housing and job centers for the Sand Creek Focus Area outside of Antioch, which is proposed for dense development, as well as protecting the beautiful Tassajara Valley and other sensitive areas.
Save Mount Diablo's stewardship work has transformed hundreds of acres into wildlife havens for rare species and created innumerable recreational opportunities for local communities. In 2016 alone, for example, Save Mount Diablo engaged 650 volunteers who worked more than 5,000 hours on projects ranging from storm damage cleanup to seeding native grasses and weeding young plantings of oak trees. As new properties and easements come under our care, stewardship will continue to be a key element in the future health of our natural areas.
Save Mount Diablo's recreation and education programs have introduced thousands of Bay Area residents and visitors to the natural wonders of Mount Diablo. Our free guided hikes program, known as Discover Diablo, gives the public an opportunity to explore the Diablo wild lands with expert leaders, and our new Conservation Collaboration Agreement Program, an experiential environmental education initiative, fosters an intimate bond between students and the natural world. Save Mount Diablo has recently joined with allies to help plan the Marsh Creek Corridor Multi-Use trail, a non-motorized, 15-mile path that will eventually extend from east Contra Costa County to the Delta.