Your Oak Woodland gift grows a 36-year-long conservation legacy!

Blue Oak Woodlands are critical natural communities sustaining livestock and wildlife in modern-day California, with indigenous stewardship since time immemorial. Largely defining our region's sense of place, 75% of these lands are held in private ownership. For 36 years, NCRLT's mission to establish voluntary conservation easements with private landowners demonstrates an effective and sustainable conservation strategy - keeping working lands working while protecting working and wild lands forever.

Your financial support has made it possible to permanently protect 41,000 total acres, and is needed in 2026 as matching funds to show community support for key acquisitions as Your Land Trust pursues large-scale funding opportunities.

NCRLT began submitting grant applications in 2025, showing our community match capacity starting to grow to prospective granting institutions, and... we attracted a $270,000 acquisition-specific match from The Rose Foundation with our first $27,000 community match!

A ten-fold ROI! YOUR contributions are truly the seeds with which we can grow regional conservation action.

For blue oak habitat conservation and voluntary land protections of these privately-held working lands, the time is NOW. Steadily receding water tables contribute to tree-stress, and acquisition of key working lands which will shelter aquifer-recharge areas are essential for this region's sustainable groundwater management strategies.

Youth are increasingly disconnected from the land as stewardship seems like "somebody else's job." Our local region, teeming with native plants and unique animals, includes areas in need of ecological repair. Establishing a community system for local seed collection, germination, and planting at levels required for meaningful restoration will improve local supplies for recovery efforts.

As Your Land Trust, NCRLT leads a project to create a Regional Conservation Partnership Plan to acquire and perpetually manage key oak woodlands in watersheds here at home. We are applying for state and federal programs to fund conservation easements and fee title acquisitions, as well as initiating strategic conservation planning, coordinated data-collection that engages youth as community stewards, and conserved-lands' oak restoration for this critical natural community.

Our goal is to raise $1,000,000 in opportunity funds to demonstrate community support for conservation, and be invested until needed as matching funds for establishing conservation easements. You may choose to restrict your donation as acquisition match, to support community and youth stewardship activities, or for strategic conservation planning, or designate as unrestricted by choosing "best need at this time."

Please contribute a tax-deductible donation today at any level that works for you.