Sustainable Conservation 2025 Annual Report

Every year, Sustainable Conservation looks most forward to the time we can spend with you, our community. Last year, you joined us for two more seasonal webinar series: Climate Resilience in Action and People, Place and Policy. Each series explored the shared challenges Californians face in fire, drought, and flood, and how collaboration, innovation, and action fuel a healthy and sustainable future.

Many of you also joined us in person for hands-on field trips to Marin County’s Lagunitas Creek and for our Climate Resilience Tour to sightsee Central Valley water security, sustainable agriculture, and riparian restoration projects. for our annual Collaboration in Action fall fundraiser, Our Forward Momentum, where we honored Ashley’s 28 years of visionary leadership and looked ahead to the next chapter for Sustainable Conservation.

We also honored Stemple Creek Ranch with the Leopold Conservation Award in partnership with Sand County Foundation, American Farmland Trust, and the California Farm Bureau Federation. The Poncia family’s commitment to habitat restoration, soil health, and sustainable practices is a model for how stewardship and food production can go hand in hand.

Thanks to you, we welcomed three new staff members to help us achieve our mission: Chief Financial Officer Tammy Chan, Water for the Future Project Director Wendy Rash, and Soil Health + Water Project Manager Kristen Murphy! We’re also delighted to have two GrizzlyCorps Fellows, Ryan Wakefield and Hayley Willner, to expand our Water for the Future and Accelerating Restoration teams’ impact.

Finally, your generous, increased support helped us meet two matching challenge gifts from longtime donors Michael Spiegelman and the Emmett Foundation.

Support and Revenue

Expenses

Fore more information, please view the organization’s 2025 990 and audited financials.

Without action, 93,000 acre-feet of water per year will be depleted from San Joaquin Basin aquifers in a changing climate, according to DWR’s 2025 Watershed Studies.

Thanks to you, Sustainable Conservation is leading that action. In 2025, our partnerships took major steps to turn challenges presented by a changing climate into resilient water resource solutions.

In December, the California Department of Water Resources released the first of their kind San Joaquin Basin Flood Managed Aquifer Recharge (Flood MAR) Watershed Studies, which use advanced climate modeling to guide coordinated flood protection, groundwater recharge, and ecosystem health across five watersheds.

Mock-up of the Fairmead orchard repurposing project. Graphic via Geosyntec Consultants.

The organization also supported the unincorporated community of Fairmead in moving a long-awaited storm water basin project toward construction. In 2025, Fairmead Community and Friends and partners secured funding to transform a 17-acre orchard into a groundwater recharging basin, native habitat, and the community’s first public green space to reduce flood risk, improve groundwater quality, and create lasting community benefits.

Sustainable Conservation remains committed to advancing policies and partnerships that strengthen California’s water resilience.

In 2025, restoration practitioners used the simplified permits co-developed by Sustainable Conservation and agency partners more than 150 times across the state.

Each use saves time and resources that add up to critical, landscape-scale ecosystem revival. Putting these projects on the ground now, not years from now, creates habitat for endangered species, flood security for communities, and a host of other benefits for human and environmental health.

Because of you, these co-sponsored permits unlocked projects like a salmon habitat enhancement project on Mendocino County’s Ten Mile River, a fish barrier removal on San Luis Obispo County’s Arroyo Grande Creek, and salmon habitat and flood control improvements to a half-mile stretch of Siskiyou County’s Scott River.

Graphic: Vicki Valentine/SF Art Department for Sustainable Conservation.

The cost-savings and ecological benefits are clear:

• According to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, in 2021-2024, simplified permits cut processing time by 35% – the equivalent of $8 million – and helped Californians restore nearly 700 stream miles and over 196,000 acres of aquatic habitat.
• In 2025 alone, CDFW’s Habitat Restoration and Enhancement Act saved a conservative estimate of $1.1 million for restoration proponents and approved 34 projects across the state.
• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Restoration Center cited that these processes have saved up to $24 million in staff time and consultant fees, decreased processing time over 50%, and helped over 330 projects in California.

Restoration at scale in California could not come at a better time for native, rebounding salmon populations and our collective flood and drought resilience.

Thanks to you, Sustainable Conservation launched the Solutions in our Soil program in 2023 to find and scale solutions at the intersection of water and soil health for community and agricultural sustainability.

In 2025, just two years later, the team celebrated a key regional policy win to formally incentivize planting cover crops! This policy change sends a clear signal that sustainable agricultural practices like cover cropping can deliver water benefits and be recognized within groundwater sustainability efforts.

Graphic: Darren Vogt for Sustainable Conservation

Building on the success of the 2024 Cover Cropping in the SGMA Era report, our team co-authored a new grower guidance document to help producers across California implement cover crops with greater confidence based on their specific goals.

The momentum we’ve created together will continue to accelerate the adoption of regenerative practices that improve water resilience, enhance soil health, and support agricultural viability statewide.

Every year, Sustainable Conservation’s first-of-its-kind Manure Subsurface Drip Irrigation (MSDI) system saves over 3 billion gallons of water, 8,300 metric tons of CO2 equivalents, and 3.5 million lbs. of nitrogen while fertilizing feed crops.

Your support has grown long‑term research and farm partnerships that help us better quantify MSDI’s impacts, including its potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, nitrate leaching to groundwater, and reliance on synthetic fertilizer across the Central Valley. In 2025, we also launched a pilot project to explore whether MSDI could deliver similar benefits for almonds. With food safety as a top priority, the team looks ahead to completing data collection in 2026 and assessing the feasibility of expanding MSDI to consumable crops.

California dairies also offer a powerful opportunity to put surplus manure to work in place of synthetic fertilizer. In 2025, we completed an initial analysis of the San Joaquin Valley “manureshed,” which looks at where excess nutrients can realistically be moved and applied to crops. The results show that surplus manure in the region contains an estimated 178,000 tons of plant‑available nitrogen, enough to replace about 12% of the nitrogen currently imported into the Valley.

Unlocking the potential of manure as sustainable fertilizer in the San Joaquin Valley is only the beginning. Sustainable Conservation will continue to scale the technology and strategies California needs to protect our drinking water and meet our emissions goals.