Conserving, protecting, and restoring watersheds is a vital part of our generation’s legacy to the future. Changes to how we use land — particularly near source water and headwaters — are hard, and sometimes impossible, to turn back. Gold mining enabled by cyanide and mercury damages our water systems and can take generations to repair, just as paving over natural floodways creates continued problems for nearby communities during heavy rainfall and major storms. Those who care about stewarding the land for future generations know the critical role water plays in the conservation and preservation of our natural resources and entire ecosystems.
But while watershed protection and landscape health are often managed separately, the truth is they are inextricably braided together. For example, our headwater forests are expansive green infrastructure that collects, filters, and delivers rainfall and snowmelt to groundwater, rivers, streams, and reservoirs. To date, the water benefits of these forests have come at little cost. With wildfire-induced threats to these resources combined with deferred maintenance that has been avoided for decades (even more than 100 years in some places), investments are needed to ensure upstream forests continue to provide clean water.
Our record of partnerships and deep grantee relationships bears out these interconnections. Whether it was helping advocate for California’s landmark 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act or the 2023 Columbia Basin Salmon Recovery Agreement in the Pacific Northwest, we worked with our grantees and funders to tackle the big issues facing entire watersheds without losing focus on the communities that depend on sustainable water sources into the future.
We bring the expertise, experience, and relationships with water utilities and organizations working in the water sector to co-develop strategies, convene coalitions, provide program funding, and align other funders, but we also work on water infrastructure right in the urban interface. We successfully promote natural/green water infrastructure approaches through strategic investments, convenings, and leadership to promote significant advances in stormwater and floodplain policy and on-the-ground impact. For example, we led a successful campaign in Los Angeles County that resulted in more than $300 million per year that will be invested in stormwater improvements.
There is much work to be done, and impact to make, when we bring together resources and grantees on the ground in a way that helps communities see the elements of watershed health, all the way from the forest upstream to the infrastructure on their street.