Prioritizing Wildlife Preservation
Photo © Benedicta Justine
Preventing biodiversity loss, preserving healthy ecosystems
Sonoma Land Trust prioritizes reconnecting habitats to ensure animals can move safely across the landscape, find food and mates, maintain genetic diversity, and prevent biodiversity loss.
Wildlife Corridors
Wildlife corridors are natural pathways that animals use to move safely across the landscape. By protecting travel routes along creeks and ridgelines, we help wildlife navigate urban areas and reach larger preserves where they can flourish.
The Sonoma Valley Wildlife Corridor
Sonoma Valley Wildlife Corridor is one link in a larger chain of strategically networked protected lands that creates a vital passage for species to move across the landscape from the Marin Coast to the Berryessa Snow Mountain. Due to the Corridor’s location in the world’s most famous wine-producing areas, and where many people have chosen to live, additional development is making these passages difficult for animals to travel through. Thanks to our work and collaboration with many partners, we are dedicated to keeping these lifelines open.
Wildlife Spotlight
Ospreys need healthy waterways and protected nesting sites, traveling along river and wetland corridors in search of fish-rich habitats.
Gray foxes rely on connected woodlands and brushy habitats to find shelter and prey, making habitat connectivity essential to their survival.
California newts migrate seasonally between upland forests and breeding ponds, depending on uninhibited routes to complete their life cycle.
Badgers spend their time on open grasslands and use connected burrow systems. These passageways offer them opportunities to hunt, find shelter, and raise their young.
Chinook salmon depend on healthy, connected rivers and streams to migrate between ocean and freshwater habitats. This free movement allows them to spawn and complete their life cycle.
The California dogface butterfly flourishes among native plants and connected meadows, relying on protected habitats to support its host plants and pollination needs.
Mountain lions depend on connected habitats to safely travel between feeding and breeding grounds, making wildlife corridors essential to their long-term survival in Sonoma County.
Bull kelp forests anchor marine ecosystems close to shore. Their vitality depends on healthy coastal waters and intact ecological connections from land to sea.
Black bears need large, intact landscapes with abundant food sources, highlighting the importance of protecting expansive and connected habitats.
Bobcats move across diverse landscapes–from grasslands to forests–using wildlife corridors to safely hunt, find mates, and maintain healthy populations.
Chorus frogs rely on seasonal wetlands and slow-moving waters to breed, serving as important indicators of ecosystem health.
Burrowing owls depend on open grasslands with underground burrows, making them especially vulnerable to habitat loss and land development.
Watch Wildlife in Action
Our Wildlife Camera Study
Habitats and Highways
In Sonoma Valley, forested hills, meandering creeks, open grasslands, and oak woodlands stretch across the landscape. So does Highway 12. Despite the numerous hurdles of roadways and development, animals are still finding ways to move across the landscape–for food, water, shelter, mates, or new territory. Yet across California, fences, roads, bright lights, noise, and sprawl increasingly block their paths.
To determine where wildlife are crossing—or attempting to cross—our busy roads, Sonoma Land Trust Stewardship Program Manager Chris Carlson has launched a study to collect key data needed to understand what kind of improvements would have the greatest impact for their safety and livelihood.
Wildlife PRESERVATION Partners
Sonoma Land Trust is committed to bringing nature’s voice to the decision table, but we can’t do it alone. We are dedicated to coalition building and developing state-wide partnerships that advance our conservation movement as a whole.
Ag + Open Space
Sonoma County Ag + Open Space permanently protects the diverse agricultural, natural resource, and scenic open space lands of Sonoma County for future generations.
North Bay Bear Collaborative
The North Bay Bear Collaborative is a working group of agencies, non-profit conservation groups, landowners and individuals committed to being proactive liaisons between humans and bears.
California Department of Fish and Wildlife
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife manages CA’s diverse fish, wildlife, plant resources & habitats, for their ecological values & for their use & enjoyment by the public.
All Hands Ecology
All Hands Ecology, is a not-for-profit land-based conservation organization founded in 1962 to protect sensitive wildlife habitat.
Point Blue Conservation Science
Point Blue Conservation Science is a nonprofit organization celebrating 60 years of advancing the conservation of birds, other wildlife, and ecosystems through science, partnerships, and outreach.
Pathways for Wildlife
Pathways for Wildlife works with land trusts, conservation organizations, and transportation agencies to help identify important wildlife and habitat linkages.