The Bay Area Open Space Council was a network of 65 nonprofits and public agencies San Francisco Bay Area founded in 1990 by a group of land conservation practitioners to provide information, tools, and connections for its members. [1] Though the Open Space Council's office was located in Berkeley, California, member organizations represented all nine counties of the San Francisco Bay Area plus Santa Cruz County. [2]
In March 2020, a group of member organizations of the Open Space Council launched Together Bay Area to replace the former organization. [3] [4]
One of the Open Space Council's projects was the Conservation Lands Network, a vision for the region's efforts to preserve biodiversity. Part of a five-year science-based study by over 125 organizations and individuals, the project was tasked to identify the most essential lands needed to sustain the natural infrastructure of the region. The Conservation Land Network studied over 4.3 million acres (17,000 km2) and over 1,000 variables, such as redwood forests and California red legged frog habitats. Along with the Subtidal Habitat Goals Project and the Baylands Ecosystem Goals Project, this project is part of a science-based, regional approach to protecting biodiversity of the Bay Area. [5]
The Council collaborated with Greeninfo Network to develop a GIS database of protected areas in the nine county San Francisco Bay Area called the Bay Area Protected Lands Database (BPAD). [6] In 2010, Santa Cruz County was included for the first time, adding a tenth county to the nine Bay Area counties.
The film Here and Now], produced by the Open Space Council with help from the Christensen Fund, Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, and The Trust for Public Land, is a short film that combines social justice, land conservation, human history, and scientific knowledge to tell the story of four partnerships between Native Americans and land conservation organizations. [7]
The Open Space Council is building a constituency for land conservation by engaging Bay Area park users in ways to get involved. The program Outdoor Voice is regional throughout all ten Bay Area counties, focusing on action, targeting Bay Area park users, and leveraging social media. [8]
A regional park is an area of land preserved on account of its natural beauty, historic interest, recreational use or other reason, and under the administration of a form of local government.
The East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD) is a special district operating in Alameda County and Contra Costa County, California, within the East Bay area of the San Francisco Bay Area. It maintains and operates a system of regional parks which is the largest urban regional park district in the United States. The administrative office is located in Oakland.
The Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) is a regional planning agency incorporating various local governments in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. It encompasses nine counties surrounding the San Francisco Bay. Those counties are Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma. It has the ability to establish housing and transportation goals for cities to minimize urban sprawl by that requiring housing be zoned for near new workplace construction. It deals with land use, housing, environmental quality, and economic development. Non-profit organizations as well as governmental organizations can be members. All nine counties and 101 cities within the Bay Area are voluntary members of ABAG.
The Bay Area Ridge Trail is a planned 550-mile (890 km) multi-use trail along the hill and mountain ridgelines ringing the San Francisco Bay Area, in Northern California. Currently, 400 miles (640 km) have been established. When complete, the trail will connect over 75 parks and open spaces. The trail is being designed to provide access for hikers, runners, mountain bicyclists, and equestrians. It will be accessible through trailheads near major population centers, while the trail will extend into more remote areas. The first trail section was dedicated on May 13, 1989.
The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) is the United States' largest private, nonprofit conservation education and advocacy organization, with over six million members and supporters, and 51 state and territorial affiliated organizations.
Formed in 1972 by voter initiative, the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD) is a non-enterprise special district in the San Francisco Bay Area. It has acquired and preserved a regional green belt of open space land and provides opportunities for ecologically-sensitive public enjoyment and education.
The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (MBNMS) is a federally protected marine area offshore of California's Big Sur and central coast in the United States. It is the largest US national marine sanctuary and has a shoreline length of 276 miles (444 km) stretching from just north of the Golden Gate Bridge at San Francisco to Cambria in San Luis Obispo County. Supporting one of the world’s most diverse marine ecosystems, it is home to numerous mammals, seabirds, fishes, invertebrates and plants in a remarkably productive coastal environment. The MBNMS was established in 1992 for the purpose of resource protection, research, education, and public use.
The California State Coastal Conservancy is a non-regulatory state agency in California established in 1976 to enhance coastal resources and public access to the coast. The CSCC is a department of the California Natural Resources Agency. The agency's work is conducted along the entirety of the California coast, including the interior San Francisco Bay and is responsible for the planning and coordination of federal land sales to acquire into state land as well as award grant funding for improvement projects. The Board of Directors for the agency is made up of seven members who are appointed by the Governor of California and approved by the California Legislature, members of the California State Assembly and California State Senate engage and provide oversight within their legislative capacity.
Sempervirens Fund, originally established in 1900 as Sempervirens Club, is California's oldest land trust. Founder Andrew P. Hill’s goal was to preserve the old-growth forest that became Big Basin Redwoods State Park, the first California state park in 1902. Sempervirens Fund's mission is to protect and permanently preserve coast redwood forests, wildlife habitat, watersheds, and other important natural features of California's Santa Cruz Mountains, and to encourage people to appreciate and enjoy this environment. Sempervirens Fund does this by purchasing land for protection and transferring it to state or local agencies. Sempervirens Fund has also worked to establish conservation easements and trail linkages between parks and coastal marine preserves. As of 2013, Sempervirens Fund has saved more than 34,000 acres of redwood lands.
The Golden Gate Biosphere Network is an internationally recognized voluntary coalition of federal, state, and local government agencies, nonprofit organizations, universities, and private partners within the Golden Gate Biosphere (GGB) region. The Network works towards protecting the biosphere region’s biodiversity and conserving its natural resources to maintain the quality of life for people within the region. The Network has been part of the UNESCO Man and Biosphere Programme since 1988 and is part of the US Biosphere Network and EuroMAB. It is recognized by UNESCO due to the significant biodiversity of the region, as well as the Network's efforts to demonstrate and promote a balanced relationship between humans and the biosphere.
The Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) is a U.S. National Recreation Area protecting 82,116 acres (33,231 ha) of ecologically and historically significant landscapes surrounding the San Francisco Bay Area. Much of the park is land formerly used by the United States Army. GGNRA is managed by the National Park Service and is the most visited unit of the National Park system in the United States, with more than 15 million visitors a year. It is also one of the largest urban parks in the world, with a size two-and-a-half times that of the consolidated city and county of San Francisco.
Located in northern California, the Suisun Marsh has been referred to as the largest brackish water marsh on west coast of the United States of America. The marsh land is part of the San Francisco Bay tidal estuary, and subject to tidal ebb and flood. The marsh is home to many species of birds and other wildlife, and is formed by the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers between Martinez and Suisun City, California and several other smaller, local watersheds. Adjacent to Suisun Bay, the marsh is immediately west of the legally defined Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta as well as part of the San Francisco Bay estuary.
The Wilderness Society is an American non-profit land conservation organization that is dedicated to protecting natural areas and federal public lands in the United States. They advocate for the designation of federal wilderness areas and other protective designations, such as for national monuments. They support balanced uses of public lands, and advocate for federal politicians to enact various land conservation and balanced land use proposals. The Wilderness Society also engages in a number of ancillary activities, including education and outreach, and hosts one of the most valuable collections of Ansel Adams photographs at their headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Conservation development, also known as conservation design, is a controlled-growth land use development that adopts the principle for allowing limited sustainable development while protecting the area's natural environmental features in perpetuity, including preserving open space landscape and vista, protecting farmland or natural habitats for wildlife, and maintaining the character of rural communities. A conservation development is usually defined as a project that dedicates a minimum of 50 percent of the total development parcel as open space. The management and ownership of the land are often formed by the partnership between private land owners, land-use conservation organizations and local government. It is a growing trend in many parts of the country, particularly in the Western United States. In the Eastern United States, conservation design has been promoted by some state and local governments as a technique to help preserve water quality.
Pilarcitos Creek is a 13.5-mile-long (21.7 km) coastal stream in San Mateo County, California, United States, that rises on the western slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains and descends through Pilarcitos Canyon to discharge into the Pacific Ocean Half Moon Bay State Beach.
Citizens for East Shore Parks (CESP) is a United States environmental organization that focuses on the acquisition and preservation of parkland in the San Francisco Bay Area. CESP works to protect open space along the East Bay shoreline for natural habitat and recreational purposes through a combination of advocacy, education, and outreach. Since its founding in 1985, CESP has worked to secure approximately 1,800 acres (730 ha) of public land, primarily through the creation of the 8.5-mile (13.7 km) long Eastshore State Park in 2002.
The Bay Area Puma Project is the first major study of pumas in the south San Francisco Bay Area. Launched in May 2008 in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the study involves nine cats that are being tracked using GPS-accelerometer collars. This project is the first phase of a projected ten-year conservation effort to preserve and protect the Bay Area puma population. The study is being conducted by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz in partnership with Felidae Conservation Fund, with coordination from the California Department of Fish and Game and California State Parks.
Monte Bello Open Space Preserve is a 3,133-acre (12.68 km2) open space preserve, located near Palo Alto in the Santa Cruz Mountains, in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties, California, United States. The preserve encompasses the upper Stevens Creek watershed in the valley between Monte Bello Ridge and Skyline Ridge. "Monte Bello" means "beautiful mountain" in Italian, and refers to Black Mountain which is the highest part of Montebello Ridge. The straight valley of upper Stevens Creek is also the rift valley of the San Andreas Fault.
Chicago Wilderness is a regional alliance of more than 250 different organizations that work together to improve the quality of life of the individuals and the many other species living in the Chicago (Illinois) area. Through the restoration and sustenation of the biological diversity that once encompassed the lands, their fundamental objective, to preserve the naturally occurring lands and waters in that region, is being made a reality. Through these activities, Chicago Wilderness played a major role in protecting and replenishing the naturally occurring ecosystems in the Chicago area as well as motivating people to become more aware and involved in the preservation of these lands and waters. Chicago Wilderness had continued to blossom through the funding and donations of many sources including private contributions, the member organizations, and state and federal grants.
The San Francisco Estuary Partnership (Partnership) is one of the 28 National Estuary Programs created in the 1987 Amendments to the Clean Water Act. The Partnership is a non-regulatory federal-state-local collaboration working to restore water quality and manage the natural resources of the San Francisco Bay-Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta estuary. The Partnership works with over 100 municipalities, non-profits, governmental agencies, and businesses and helps develop, find funding for, and implement over 40 projects and programs aimed at improving the health of the estuary. The partnership either directly implements these projects, or administers and manages grants, holds educational workshops and highlights project results. The Partnership is also the official representative for the San Francisco Bay region to the Most Beautiful Bays in the World.
