On January 30, Save Mount Diablo awarded Joan Hamilton and Protect San Benito with the Mountain Star Award.
The award recognizes individuals and organizations whose contributions have been significant in helping Save Mount Diablo achieve its conservation mission.
The Mountain Star Award is given each year at the end of our annual State of the Mountain Address.
Joan Hamilton
Joan Hamilton receives Mountain Star Award. Photo by Mary Nagle
Joan Hamilton has been supporting Save Mount Diablo and other local environmental organizations’ work with her videos and audible guides for more than a decade.
What began as a series of audible guides to Mount Diablo’s trails in 2010 has become an important repository of historical information on Mount Diablo and its sustaining Diablo Range.
Since 2010, Joan has created a series of audible guides, and later, full-fledged videos, through her organization, Audible Mount Diablo.
Joan is a talented writer, producer, narrator, and editor. She spends countless hours in the field collecting information and using it to create the guides and videos.
Joan Hamilton in the field. Photo by Scott Hein
Audible Mount Diablo viewers can learn about Mount Diablo’s rich natural and cultural history; her guides portray
- the conservationists who helped protect Mount Diablo from development,
- the history of Mount Diablo State Park,
- the Native Americans who inhabited the land for thousands of years, and
- the beautiful trails and local landmarks on and around Mount Diablo.
Her work has been a bridge to other local organizations like the Mount Diablo Interpretive Association and has been incredibly important in introducing people to Save Mount Diablo’s work.
Over the years, her series of guided hikes has introduced numerous people to some of Mount Diablo’s most beautiful and ecologically diverse areas.
Her short movies have been featured in several film festivals, including the Green Film Festival of San Francisco, Albany FilmFest, and the American Indian Film Festival.
When Save Mount Diablo’s area of interest expanded to include the Diablo Range, Joan Hamilton stepped up and began the multi-year Diablo Range Revealed project, creating a series of videos introducing people to little-known parts of the Diablo Range.
Last year, this work culminated in an 83-minute film,
With the help of ranchers, scientists, and land managers, Fire, Drought, Rain and Hope explores life in California’s inland Coast Range after the huge fires of 2020. It ventures into places off the beaten track for most Bay Area residents yet deeply connected to places they already love.
The Fire, Drought, Rain and Hope film premiere was quickly sold out! Photo by Mary Nagle
In 2024, Joan also created a These videos helped us build enough support to get a win on San Benito County’s Measure A in the November 2024 election.
Although we have paid Joan a nominal amount for her work, the time and effort she puts into every step of these projects far exceeds our investment.
If we had to pay a video production company for these projects, they would be significantly more expensive and likely lower quality.
Her hard work and passion for conservation have helped us make the case for a major capital campaign and inspired conservationists throughout the Mount Diablo region.
Protect San Benito
Protect San Benito receives Mountain Star Award. Photo by Mary Nagle
For more than a decade, Protect San Benito has been the most important grassroots activist conservation organization in San Benito County (and sometimes Monterey).
San Benito County is the biggest and one of the most important parts of the Diablo Range and has been one of the most threatened. It includes Pinnacles National Park, large areas of land owned by the Bureau of Land Management, the longest river in the range, and the highest peak.
In November 2024, Protect San Benito succeeded in passing Measure A, a county-wide initiative they qualified called “Empower Voters to Make Land Use Decisions,” despite massive deceptive opposition by developers.
Measure A requires a vote of the people for major land use changes and will dramatically shift power from developers to residents.
A similar Measure Q in 2022 failed, but rather than being discouraged, Protect San Benito got busy and qualified Measure A, with our help. It’s probably the most significant land use victory in San Benito history and will be a game changer for the county, with benefits for decades to come.
With initiatives, referenda, lawsuits, and other grassroots efforts, the all-volunteer group has stopped oil fracking in both counties, and defended against and stopped numerous development projects.
The bad projects they’ve stopped included 2,777-acre Strada Verde and development nodes along Highway 101, expansion of the John Smith landfill, Betabel, etc.
They’ve helped protect major areas too. Measure A will dramatically reduce development pressure especially in northern San Benito County.
But even before Measure A was put into place, an attempt to get around it by an outgoing lame-duck Hollister City Council was thwarted by Protect San Benito’s quick grassroots action.
The former Hollister City Council approved a General Plan update for the city (the largest in San Benito County and where most residents live) that increased its sphere of influence (within which development is foreseen) by 3,000 acres.
On Monday, January 20, our allies at Protect San Benito turned in 3,562 signatures to referend this blatant attempt to circumvent the increased protections of Measure A.
Protect San Benito volunteers in front of Hollister City Hall. Photo courtesy of Protect San Benito
Now the signatures will be counted and verified.
If the requirements are met, the current Hollister City Council, which is more aligned with our interest in protecting agriculture and open space, can either adopt the referendum (thereby invalidating the approval of the General Plan update) or place it on the ballot for voters to decide.
We are hopeful they will adopt.
Protect San Benito immediately pivoted from victory on Measure A to this referendum.
And they’re already talking about a companion Urban Limit Line measure for the City of Hollister.
San Benito’s agricultural lands and open spaces are at high risk for development. Photo by Cooper Ogden
Save Mount Diablo was a significant supporter of Measure A and the referendum, and our partnership with Protect San Benito is one of the most important in our expanding Diablo Range program.
With the land use defense of Measure A and passage in the same November 2024 election of the Proposition 4 climate bond and its San Andreas/Inner Coast Range fund, tens of thousands of acres are likely to be conserved in San Benito County in the next few years.
Joan Hamilton, our other Mountain Star nominee, produced a five-part video series about San Benito to help with public education in support of Measure A.
