2022 Annual Report

Persistence. It has always been fundamental to Green Foothills’ work. This is the advantage of an organization like ours, which ensures that local nature always has a team of champions ready to fight on until victory is achieved. Each year brings us new challenges and 2022 – our 60th year – was no different, but our commitment to you is to never quit until our region is a place where wildlife thrives and communities live in balance with nature.

This year, we championed the closure of Lehigh Quarry and cement plant, protected green space in San Jose as the city adds much-needed housing, and worked to stop development in high fire-hazard severity zones. We were steadfast in our ongoing work to protect the Stanford Foothills from an expanding campus, Bay wetlands from excessive office development, Coyote Valley from increased commercial development along the Coyote Creek corridor, the Amah Mutsun’s most sacred site – Juristac – from a proposed open-pit sand and gravel mine near Gilroy, and thousands of miles of rangeland in San Benito County from urban sprawl.

We are also excited to announce that we are in the planning stages of developing Spanish language materials for our Leadership Program. 2023 will be the 10th anniversary of this program which has now graduated more than 240 local changemakers who are making a difference through their leadership throughout San Mateo, Santa Clara, and San Benito Counties.

In addition to this, we are supporting and resourcing the groups and people who are key partners in our mission to protect local nature. This includes providing staffing and grant writing support to the Muwekma Ohlone Preservation Foundation and Calpulli Tonalehqueh.

In 2022 we increased the percentage of our expenditures directed toward programs. I expect that programs will be an even greater percentage of our expenditures in 2023 as we endeavor to effectively stretch every dollar that you generously donate.

Thank you for all you do for our local natural environment.