You can’t travel more than 30 minutes in any direction in the San Francisco Bay Area without seeing its impact—if you know where to look.

You can’t travel more than 30 minutes in any direction in the San Francisco Bay Area without seeing the impact of the California State Coastal Conservancy, if you know where to look.

Take a weekend drive past the Sonoma Baylands or Suisun Marsh, through San Geronimo Valley or Coyote Valley, over a wildlife crossing on Highway 17, and around Fitch Mountain or Mount Diablo. Look out the airplane’s window as your flight descends into the Oakland airport or SFO and you’ll see the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project. Take your kids on a bike ride anywhere on the 350 miles of the San Francisco Bay Trail. Slip into a kayak and launch from one of 47 Bay Area Water Trail trailheads. Go for a walk, ride a bike, or ride a horse on the 400 miles of the Bay Area Ridge Trail.

These are just some of the places that have been conserved, restored, enhanced, and made accessible by grants and support from the state Coastal Conservancy. This year, 2026, marks the agency’s 50th anniversary, and I invite you to join me in celebrating how much this one agency has shaped not only the state’s coastline, but the entirety of the Bay Area.

Let’s go back to 1976, a big year for California’s coast. A citizen-led movement resulted in the passage of the California Coastal Act, intended to protect the California coast and the public’s right to access it. The Coastal Conservancy was formed as a non-regulatory state agency to protect and improve natural lands and waterways, to help people get to and enjoy the outdoors, and to sustain local economies along California’s shoreline.

Screenshot from the Coastal Conservancy’s interactive Project Viewer, where you can see more details.

As we all know, water flows downhill, and in the 1990s, the Bay Area Open Space Council saw the need to fund projects upstream. Then–council executive director John Woodbury led a group of conservation leaders from around the region to work with State Senator Byron Sher to form the San Francisco Bay Area Conservancy Program (aka Bay Area Program) within the Coastal Conservancy. In 1997, the Coastal Conservancy gained the authority to fund projects that protect, restore, and improve access to natural resources throughout the nine-county Bay Area. This authority essentially expanded the conservancy’s scope to include one of the largest estuaries on the West Coast, but more than just the bay shore. It also enabled the Coastal Conservancy’s Bay Area Program to fund projects beyond the coast, in valleys and floodplains, up to the ridges and peaks, throughout the entirety of the nine counties. This is why you can see the conservancy’s work by car, ferry, bike, foot, airplane, or horse, within a half hour of any point in the Bay Area.

It’s not an understatement to say that the Coastal Conservancy has since transformed the health of the region’s lands, waters, and communities. Contributing more than any other funder, it has allocated more than $387 million to over 700 restoration, protection, and public access projects in the Bay Area.

TOGETHER Bay Area has long been a partner with the Coastal Conservancy. One connection is through the Conservation Lands Network, an online database of Bay Area lands and ecological features that supports prioritizing areas that need protection. TOGETHER leads and regularly updates the CLN, which in turn guides the Coastal Conservancy’s land protection efforts in the region. The annual TOGETHER Conference provides opportunities for TOGETHER Bay Area member organizations—80 nonprofits, Native-led land trusts, public agencies, resource conservation districts, and mission-aligned businesses doing work on the ground in all 10 counties—to meet and talk with Coastal Conservancy staff. And TOGETHER Bay Area is a frequent advocate for allocations to the Coastal Conservancy from the state’s general fund and for statewide bond measures like the Climate Bond (Proposition 4 in 2024).

How do we celebrate the Coastal Conservancy’s 50th anniversary? By getting outside. By contributing financially to or participating in local conservation efforts. By voting for policies that fund the Coastal Conservancy, like Californians did for the Climate Bond. We celebrate by telling the story of this transformational state agency.

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Happy 50th anniversary, Coastal Conservancy. Thank you for your contributions to making the Bay Area, and the entire California coast, the beautiful and special place that it is.

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