2023 Annual Report

Thanks to the continued generosity of our donors, Sustainable Conservation celebrated 30 years of advancing the collaborative stewardship of California’s land, air, and water. To say thank you, we hosted a memorable gathering to celebrate our 30th Anniversary at Green’s Restaurant in the iconic Fort Mason, San Francisco. Among the distinguished attendees were former Governor Jerry Brown, California Secretary of Agriculture Karen Ross, Executive Director of the Wildlife Conservation Board Jennifer Norris, and others.

Over the past three decades, our initiatives have built tangible change. Notably, the Brake Pad Partnership has already reduced an estimated 28% of copper runoff in urban waterways, with 60% of brakes on the market being copper-free. Meanwhile, the PlantRight initiative successfully removed invasive plants from big box stores and 80% of all California nurseries.

In 2023, we united our programs around one of California’s most critical resources: water. Our initiatives linked floodplain restoration, nitrate management, and water quality efforts with innovative approaches to groundwater replenishment, soil health practices, and circularity in the agricultural supply chain.

With your support, Sustainable Conservation was prepared to navigate the deluge that inundated California at the start of 2023.

With record rains, our partners achieved a threefold increase in groundwater recharge compared to any previous year. In addition, approximately 500,000 acre-feet of water were recharged on San Joaquin Valley farmland as reported by the Public Policy Institute of California.

The Watershed Moment Initiative is our 3-year campaign to support recharge and other activities. The Initiative that ends in December 2025 extends far beyond assisting growers with recharge to support these additional efforts:

Fairmead Groundwater Resilience Project

In collaboration with Fairmead Community and Friends, CivicWell, and others, Sustainable Conservation will demonstrate how recharge and land repurposing can support the community of Fairmead where domestic wells are running dry. Working directly with Fairmead residents, our team aims to develop a suite of projects that help to secure water resources in and around the community, even as climate change results in more variability in wet and dry years.

Thanks to your ongoing support, the Accelerating Restoration program will continue developing diverse restoration pathways and multi-agency statewide permits to achieve restoration at the pace and scale we need.

Restoration Round-Up

You can read about three amazing projects that used the permitting pathways we helped put in place. Your generosity helped dedicated restorationists secure a healthy Sierra meadow for two species, revitalize a local floodplain, and reimagine a waterway for habitat and recreation.

Accelerating Restoration Website

In 2023, the team launched a new one-stop shop to help California restorationists find and understand how to use federal and state permitting pathways for aquatic and riparian habitat restoration projects.

Check out acceleratingrestoration.org!

Photo coutesy of John Chacon / California Department of Water Resources

Thanks to your support, we were able to launch the Solutions in Our Soil Program with a dedicated team to explore how soil health can benefit California’s water resources.

Soil health is the foundation of California’s agricultural productivity and an essential tool in addressing the state’s water challenges. Healthy soils can play a critical role in water conservation and protection with improved infiltration, water-holding capacity, and nutrient retention. By enhancing soil health statewide, we bolster the resilience of California’s farms, communities, and ecosystems to droughts and floods, and advance our vision of healthy, abundant water ecosystems for all.

Your generosity enabled these significant milestones in 2023:

UCSC High Carbon Amendment Research Partnership

Collaborating with Dr. Joji Muramoto from the UCSC Center for Agroecology, Sustainable Conservation funded the education and training of UCSC students to participate in the first large-scale research trial on the effectiveness of almond shell carbon amendments in protecting water quality from residual nitrate on Central Coast strawberry farms.

Stakeholder Convenings

From October 2022 to May 2023, we convened hundreds of researchers, irrigation experts, technical assistance providers, tool developers, and Groundwater Sustainability Agency representatives. These sessions focused on cover cropping practices and water outcomes in the San Joaquin Valley, and informed our cover cropping report suite we will publish in 2024.

Sustainable Conservation began working in the early 2000s to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by proving the practicality of methane digesters for California ranches. The state and others have since built on our early efforts, resulting in about 5 billion pounds less greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from dairies — equivalent to taking 510,000 cars off the road.

Thanks to your investment, our work to improve impacts on our drinking water continues. Working with the California dairy industry allows us to address nitrate pollution at one of its main sources – and create meaningful change with new technologies and accessible ways to manage dairy manure.

Our award-winning subsurface drip irrigation system (SDI) that delivers manure to dairy silage and forage has scaled nationally and internationally. In California, 3,500 acres of dairies use SDI, with several thousand more acres expected soon.