A golden moment for nature: Sonoma Land Trust turns 50

An interview with founder Joan Vilms as she reflects on the early days

50 years ago was 1976, the Bicentennial Year and a time of national reflection, looking both where we had come from and what the future might hold. It was also the year Sonoma Land Trust was born, which was no coincidence. The country was growing, society was changing, and people were beginning to realize that if they didn’t make their voices heard, what they loved could be lost. Fifty years on, the partnership with our communities has preserved so much of what makes our county so special. And the job isn’t done, with ever-evolving threats to the land continuing to challenge our capacity to adapt. But one thing has always stayed the same, which still to this day makes Sonoma Land Trust who we are: our values and our mission to do right by the land and our communities.

“Few places in this country have the varied natural beauties of Sonoma County. It is this bounty that must be protected by those of us fortunate enough to live here.” Those are the words that open up the first-ever Sonoma Land Trust printed brochure five decades ago, and they’re still just as true today.

“If we make the wrong choices, or if we let apathy make our choices by default, years from now a generation of young people will be inspecting yellowing photographs and listening to old-timers reminisce about the way it used to be. On the other hand, if we combine our imagination and our sense of responsibility, we can, in these pivotal years, make a genuine difference.”

How did they, the founding members of Sonoma Land Trust, do?

One person who can speak to that is Joan Vilms, one of Sonoma Land Trust’s earliest members and a land conservation visionary who went on to work with us for 17 years. She was also instrumental in helping Napa Land Trust, Sonoma Ag + Open Space, and Land Trust Alliance get off the ground, and helped write the legislation that became California’s conservation easement law, still to this day one of the most powerful tools we have for protecting land.

This past year, we were honored to reconnect with Vilms. “I’m thrilled with all that Sonoma Land Trust has accomplished,” she shared. “It’s become a valued institution with deep roots in the community.”

Reflecting on Sonoma Land Trust’s next 50 years, “the land trust already has a strong foundation with tremendous support,” she said, “and I think it’s really important for it not to be neutral, but to know who the people are on its staff and what their values are, who the donors are and what their values are, and steer it with people who have a nature-based ethic, who are high-minded, charismatic, extremely bright and forward-looking, not for the betterment of humanity, but for the betterment of the whole system.” 

Over the coming year, we’ll be celebrating Sonoma Land Trust’s history, not just to take a walk down memory lane but to rediscover the people, stories, and values that feed our work today, to celebrate where we’ve been and envision where we’ll go. With humility, we also recognize that is just one story in the many-stranded narrative of the landscape and people of Sonoma County. This is not the story of Native people who stewarded this land for millennia and still do to this day; and which is theirs and only theirs to tell. For the Land Trust—in 50 years, we hope your children and grandchildren will be recounting how you took up the story and added new chapters!

One of the first Sonoma Land Trust brochures.