ANNUAL GALA MESSAGE
From Nicole Padron, Co-Executive Director

Good evening, everyone! Thank you all for joining us tonight to celebrate our 12th Annual Gala. I am grateful to see so many friends here tonight. I don’t know what is more accurate – that I can’t believe it has already been a year or that I’ve lived 3 lifetimes since I was last at this podium. Either way, I am grateful that through it all we are still here working together to conserve and steward our natural, wild and open spaces.

Since last year, we have expanded our land stewardship capabilities. Michael Viramontes, our Stewardship Manager, thanks to his mentor Ken Osborne, is now qualified to conduct independent surveys for the endangered Delhi Sands Flower-Loving Fly. (We’re just waiting on his permit from the federal government – not sure what the delay is all about). Additionally, we are kicking off our first season of a small and nimble in-house herbicide program to carefully target invasive plants that harm our natural habitats. And early this spring, our stewardship and community programs staff participated in the annual California Land & Water Conservation Conference, joining a network of land trusts throughout the State to learn from each other as we navigate unexpected challenges and new opportunities in our work to conserve and steward land.

Also in spring we wrapped up our 10th anniversary (!) of the Acorns to Oaks program. Since 2015 we’ve reached nearly 2,300 middle and high school students through our zero cost program thanks to your collective support, which includes grants from the Inland Empire Resource Conservation District, Edison International, and YuHAAviatam of San Manuel Nation. A big shout out to our wonderful teacher partners Lauren Cochrane, Freddy Martinez, and Kyle Gerhard who continue to engage with us so together we can enrich their student’s lives with memorable field experiences that we hope encourage our future land stewards. We think it is working because past students have returned to help with the field trips and to volunteer with us on their own time.

Speaking of volunteers. We have some of the best. Starting with our 14-member Board of Directors, who include working and retired engineers, educators, water and natural resources professionals and civil servants. The depth and breadth of their knowledge make this organization stronger every day. This past year our staff engaged over 570 volunteers across 43 outreach and stewardship events at Cienega Canyon Preserve, the Colton Dunes, the California Native Plant Gardens, and the Santa Ana River & Trail and others. We are grateful to our volunteers. They keep showing up to build better world with us – volunteers here tonight include Andy Remo, Cindy Bennet, Faith McClure, Linda Dilday, Hunter Lewis, Claudia Lewis, and Anthony Palafox. We couldn’t do it without you all! Thank you.

We also couldn’t do it without our dedicated partners. We’re happy to share that this fall, in partnership with City of Riverside Parks we’re expanding our California Native Plant Gardens to include Villegas Park in the Casa Blanca neighborhood. Thanks to the support of volunteers and Parks staff, like UHliza Quintero and Jarin Valencia, the Bryant Park Garden was bustling with monarch activity this year. During an early summer visit we could see dozens of adult monarch butterflies and chunky caterpillars on the milkweed as well as other native pollinators thriving in the garden. And in July, Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson issued a Proclamation acknowledging our efforts to preserve and strengthen the monarch butterfly population through our native plant gardens.

We know our habitat restoration projects are helping our wildlife, but they are helping us, too. We need to spend time in nature, and we need to spend time in community to be healthy. It reminds us that we belong and that we’re not doing life alone. And when our individual and collective despair feels too heavy to bear, volunteerism allows us to take direct action, to create meaningful change in our communities, and to remind us that we are part of something bigger than ourselves.

Thank you to our volunteers who inspire us to keep moving forward, to our partners who help us carry the load, and to our donors who provide the support we need to carry out our mission. We are grateful to all of you. Thank you!