“To bring people to nature and nature to people through restoring habitats and environmental education”
The Habitat Stewardship Project brings together people and nature through environmental stewardship. At our core is restoring habitats by propagation and out-planting of native plants (~15,000 annually), cleaning damaged sites of trash/litter (thousands of pounds), and supporting partners who create parks and open spaces. The 4500 children who plant with us in grade school, proceed to college, and work as student assistants and then, they too, remain in our community as conservation leaders. We restore habitats (dunes, grasslands, chaparral, riparian) which are responsible for multiple ecosystem services while HSP people are agents of social responsibility and change. HSP depends on stewardship volunteers and we know that “volunteers are free but they don’t work for nothing,” so MCGIVES funding will support bringing volunteers out into nature!
HSP impacts Monterey County landscapes from North Monterey County Parks planting, to cleaning the Creeks of Salinas, to helping create Salinas’ new Ensen Community Park, to planting chaparral plants on Ft. Ord National Monument and dune plants at the Marina Dunes, to riparian species along the Salinas River in Soledad and milkweeds at Ft. Hunter Liggett. HSP impacts disadvantaged children/youth from Salinas/Seaside/Castroville/Marina, developmentally disabled adults from Salinas, farmworker families from Salinas, community volunteers from the Monterey Peninsula, and CSUMB students from across the state. The HSP model of nature and community based habitat restoration travels out of the county with CSUMB graduates
It’s easy to say that Habitat Stewardship Project changed my life. HSP has assisted in restoration and Environmental Education efforts in Monterey County for more than 30 years, and I could tell from the very first event I attended how much of an impact HSP has on the surrounding communities. Be it cleaning up litter or planting native plants, I could see not only the physical changes, but how people are shaped by their experience. Through my service with HSP I learned what it truly means to build our communities and become part of a change that’s bigger than any one person alone.
- Azalea Wiley, Monterey
