On January 30, Save Mount Diablo’s Board, staff, and supporters came together at the Don Tatzin Community Hall in the Lafayette Library for our annual State of the Mountain Address to look back on a year of conservation. It was a standing room only event.
Save Mount Diablo is grateful to everyone who attended and helped make our State of the Mountain Address a huge success.
Executive Director Ted Clement gave an inspiring speech about our major accomplishments over the past year, and showed the audience how Save Mount Diablo is coming into 2025 strong and ready to make more conservation victories a reality.
For the last several years, Save Mount Diablo has delivered successful years from programmatic, financial, and overall organizational perspectives.
In his remarks, Ted noted how a great team, made up of Save Mount Diablo’s Board of Directors, staff, and supporters, helps make such consistent success, year in and year out, possible.
He expressed his gratitude to everyone on the Save Mount Diablo team, and he noted how not taking our success for granted but being sincerely grateful for it and everyone who helps make it possible has been one of the important keys to our ongoing success.
Ted also described Save Mount Diablo’s active rolling three-year Strategic Plan process as an integral part of the organization’s success; the Board and staff are regularly involved with talking about, checking, and improving our strategic direction.
This process includes the annual Strategic Plan retreat for staff in November and the annual Strategic Plan Board retreat in January.
In reflecting back on 2024, Ted described how at the 2024 Board retreat, after careful discussion, it was agreed to expand Save Mount Diablo’s geographic scope to cover the entire Diablo Range.
Save Mount Diablo’s staff at our annual staff retreat. Photo by Laura Kindsvater
Save Mount Diablo’s Board of Directors at our annual Board retreat. Photo by Scott Hein
In this time of the climate crisis, it is especially important to think of whole natural systems, like a mountain range, because by protecting more of the whole we can help a natural system be more resilient.
In the State of the Mountain Address, it was described in detail how Save Mount Diablo now works to protect Mount Diablo and the entire Diablo Range that it is a part of and sustained by.
Ted then went on to reflect and celebrate specific Save Mount Diablo 2024 successes in advocacy, land acquisition, stewardship, education, and fundraising.
At the end of 2024, Save Mount Diablo celebrated the passing of California’s Proposition 4 and San Benito’s Measure A, both huge conservation game-changers that Save Mount Diablo directly worked on helping pass.
Measure A will help protect San Benito’s open spaces and agricultural lands from development. Photo by Cooper Ogden
Prop. 4, also known as California’s $10 billion climate bond, is the largest state level climate investment in the history of the United States. And the Diablo Range will certainly see some of this money; $80 million is specifically dedicated to the San Andreas Linkage/Diablo Range area.
Measure A creates a barrier to the rapid, out-of-control development that has been plaguing San Benito County by putting land use decisions in the hands of voters.
This past year marked major progress on two land acquisition projects, the Ginochio Schwendel Ranch and North Peak Ranch, which we expect to finish in 2025 and by 2027, respectively.
We plan to close escrow on the Ginochio Schwendel Ranch on March 6, 2025. Photo by Scott Hein
And we got a look at some of the many projects that our stewardship and education team worked hard on in 2024:
- opening two new trails through upper Curry Canyon Ranch;
- getting hundreds of kids out into nature through our Young Diablo Explorers and Diablo Conservation Experience programs;
Campolindo High School students during the Diablo Conservation Experience program. Photo by Kendra Smith
- planting and protecting more than 1,000 trees and plants in the past year as part of our goal to plant and protect 10,000 in 10 years;
- fire abatement;
Chipping on the Knobcone Point Trail during the Pine Canyon Cleanup. Photo by Mary Nagle
- our annual Pine Canyon Cleanup, in which 126 volunteers gave 848 hours taking care of Mount Diablo over two days; and
- creating and monitoring kestrel boxes to help American kestrel populations rebound in the Mount Diablo region.
Kestrel fledgling takes flight. Photo by Sean Burke
During the State of the Mountain Address, Ted also reflected on the challenging times in which we live. He noted that during such times it is especially important to focus on matters that build our resilience, so we are better equipped to make it through the challenges.
He noted that being part of a good community is an important way to build resiliency and that nature heals—and that Save Mount Diablo provides both.
Nature heals. Photo by Scott Hein
Ted then shared some of Save Mount Diablo’s exciting plans for 2025 including
- creating an Advisory Council,
- the plan to close escrow on Ginochio Schwendel Ranch in March, and
- a large fundraising campaign to support and further the organization’s Diablo Range
As part of the event, Save Mount Diablo also honored Joan Hamilton and Protect San Benito with a Mountain Star Award this year.
Our State of the Mountain Address celebrates a year of success with the people who made it all possible, and gives our supporters a preview of Save Mount Diablo’s plans for 2025 and beyond.
