Each year, participants in the Green Foothills Leadership Program complete a capstone project. The project involves planning an advocacy campaign that benefits open space, farmland, or natural resources and advances race equity. Participants spend several months designing their campaigns individually or in small groups. Some later develop their projects in the real world, while for...
Update: The City Council was not able to vote on this issue at the May 6 Council meeting because city staff had not prepared an official recommendation to vote on. Therefore, this issue will be coming back before the City Council at a future date. We will alert supporters when this happens. On Monday, May...
A local agency has proposed creating a giant artificial lagoon in San Francisco Bay that could result in deadly algae blooms, destruction of wetlands, and other harmful impacts to the Bay. This unprecedented project would construct a 2.65-mile-long offshore barrier stretching from San Francisco Airport to the San Mateo border and walling off 670 acres...
San Benito County celebrated a victory for open space and rangeland in March when a proposal to expand the John Smith Road Landfill to five times its current size was withdrawn by the landfill operator after overwhelming public opposition. The County had been considering a massive expansion to the John Smith Road Landfill for years....
Tamara Smith-Jones is the founder of Helping Others Maintain Earth (H.O.M.E.), an organization whose mission is community empowerment. She participated in the Green Foothills Leadership Program in 2022 and created a capstone project focused on social justice in East Palo Alto. “The Leadership Program lit a fire under me in terms of realizing the urgency...
A public comment period has revealed overwhelming support for protecting Juristac, a nearly pristine landscape of rolling hillsides, sycamore riparian woodlands, serpentine grassland, freshwater wetlands, and unique natural tar seeps in southern Santa Clara County. More than 10,000 letters were submitted to the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors during the public comment period for...
The story of the salt marsh harvest mouse is the story of the San Francisco Bay wetlands – once abundant, now extremely scarce due to human development and increasingly at risk from sea level rise. But we can save both the salt marsh harvest mouse and our Bay wetland ecosystem if we act now. Meet...
Did you know that San Mateo County Parks are home to 138 rare, threatened, and endangered species? County Parks natural resource managers are responsible for ensuring that these species continue to survive in the face of climate change, which is bringing hotter, drier seasons, increased fire risk, greater extremes in precipitation patterns, and rising seas....
Update 3/22/24: Good news! Waste Solutions, the operator of the John Smith Road Landfill, withdrew their appeal. This means that the Planning Commission’s decision stands, and the expansion will not be moving forward as it is currently proposed, and will not be discussed by the Board of Supervisors on 3/26. There is a possibility that...
Green Foothills has historically focused on Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties. Mountain lions and other wildlife, however, are unaware of county lines, and development impacts don’t stop when one county ends and another begins. As land further north becomes scarce, developers are turning their attention to lands further south in San Benito County. So...
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