The Yerba Buena Chapter of the California Native Plant Society is honored to have hosted and convened the San Francisco Biodiversity Vision 2020 event on November 18, 2019.
More than 60 people attended from organizations around the Bay Area to discuss how we can improve San Francisco biodiversity in the near future.
This meeting generated ideas that will greatly improve the state of biodiversity in San Francisco. Together, we hope to create a model of local biodiversity restoration for similarly densely developed areas experiencing biodiversity loss due to past practices and the lack of programs and policies.
A special thanks to Peter Brastow, Biodiversity Coordinator at San Francisco Department of the Environment, for opening the evening's festivities. Thanks also to everyone who attended and participated in what was very much a community-based affair.
We are grateful that the city of San Francisco has a Department of the Environment and for city leaders who approved the groundbreaking SF Biodiversity Resolution in April 2018.
The Biodiversity-Brainstorm Results
The event's crowning achievement is the large volume of ideas that the participants generated. Beth Cataldo, our chapter's volunteerism chair, compiled every idea submitted into an 11-page document and also created a more concise summary, editing the original one down (by combining similar ideas) into a 6-page document.
Here are links to documents from the event:
Brainstorm Summary (6-page PDF)
Brainstorm Results Unedited (11-page PDF)
Brain Tickler Questions from Yerba Buenos (7-page PDF)
SF Biodiversity Vision 2020 presentation (80-page PDF)
Next steps
Ideas make great beginnings but, make no mistake, if we do not put energy into the ones we feel will be the most effective, they will gather in the dustbin of history. Let's not let great ideas go to waste.
Our chapter's Conservation Committee is staying busy, meeting regularly (and always looking for help). We are a committed group of volunteers dedicated to continuing the conversation, collaborating, developing programs and pushing policies that we feel are practical and effective for increasing our area's biodiversity.
Stay in touch by joining the Biodiversity forum (link on the upper-right side of the page).
Yerba Buenos have also created an evolving SF Biodiversity resource page that we hope you will use and share.
Please email us information that you think should be added to our biodiversity pages: yerba.buena.cnps.chapter@gmail.com
Continue the Conversation:
Join the BiodiversitySF Forum
One of the ideas presented at the event was the creation of a Biodiversity forum for our community to share future ideas, agency and community meeting details, information related to biodiversity, best practices, educational opportunities, and restoration and habitat change events or happenings.
In that spirit, we have created the BiodiversitySF forum.
Join in the conversation by submitting your email address below. If you know of others who were not at the event but have interest in topics related to the biodiversity of the San Francisco Bay Area, please share this link: