Bolsa Chica Land Trust

The mission of the Bolsa Chica Land Trust is the acquisition, restoration, and preservation of all of Bolsa Chica, and the education of the public to its natural wonders and its cultural significance.

The Bolsa Chica Land Trust (BCLT) was formed in 1992 by a small group of Californians who believed that one of the last standing wetland/upland ecosystems in Southern California was worth preserving for future generations. The Land Trust now includes more than 5000 members from throughout California and twenty other states.

BCLT is the leading environmental advocacy group for protecting and preserving both the environmental and cultural resources of the entire Bolsa Chica ecosystem, from the wetlands to the uplands. Since its inception, BCLT has been the catalyst for the state acquisition of wetlands and uplands at Bolsa Chica, preventing its loss to urban sprawl. Today, we are fulfilling our mission to care for all of Bolsa Chica through our hands-on community-based habitat restoration project to increase biodiversity, sustainability, fire resiliency, and healthy habitat. We are educating thousands of students and members of the public each year to the importance of this natural landscape and its habitats, and how it connects to larger environmental issues. We partner with the state and federal agencies which make up the BCER Steering Committee to address larger infrastructure issues, restoration needs, and preparations for sea-level rise. BCLT has been successful in bringing state bond funding to Bolsa Chica projects and has raised $1 Million from our membership towards the purchase of the last remaining threatened pieces of Bolsa Chica. Our achievements at Bolsa Chica have protected this wetland complex and others throughout California through our precedent setting activism. Now, we embrace the responsibilities of caring for Bolsa Chica into the future.

Throughout our 33-year history, the Bolsa Chica Land Trust has succeeded in bringing the community together to protect this precious coastal resource from developments that would have erased the habitats and altered the landscape. Today we are focused on ensuring for the care and wellbeing of the critical wildlife habitats found here. BCLT is leading the effort to find solutions to address issues with the tidal inlet and lowlands. BCLT is now working to restore the 2 nesting islands within Outer Bolsa Bay, which were created in the late ’70s and today serve 13 avian species, 3 of which are listed as Endangered/Threatened. For each of these projects, BCLT has been awarded bond-funded grants, thus bringing voter-approved bond funds to work at Bolsa Chica. BCLT has educated 33,000 third-grade students through our Miracles of the Marsh curriculum program offered at no charge to participating schools. Our restoration team, in its 29th year, has planted more than 100,000 native plants with 35,000 community volunteers. Through a years-long project BCLT has directly planted more than 30,000 Southern tarplant, a rare listed species, and through restoration efforts have seen the species naturally expand its population tenfold. In 2019 the team constructed our Growing Space nursery on-site. In 2020 we doubled the size of the facility and are propagating over 4,000 native plants annually. In 2020/2021 we began to partner with the Center for Environmental Biology at the University of California, Irvine and invited their students to join us as we begin restoration efforts to the part of the Bolsa Chica Mesa which experienced a 62-acre wildfire. In 2025 we area again doubling the size and capacity of our onsite nursery to support a wildfire resiliency restoration project in collaboration with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The Bolsa Chica Land Trust funds all of our outreach, education, and restoration projects and programs through membership donations, corporate giving, foundation and state grants. Your charitable gift to BCLT will support our efforts to educate thousands of students each year, to restore acres of native habitat that serves our wildlife, and to fund our collaboration with the managing state agencies on large-scale sustainability projects that will ensure Bolsa Chica thrives. Your support is critical for BCLT to maintain these important projects and programs, as we share the vision of a healthy coastal environment at Bolsa Chica.

Orange and Los Angeles Counties, California

The Bolsa Chica Land Trust is a powerful, passionate, and focused organization. We are fortunate to have a devoted membership, 5,000 people who share in our vision for a healthy, thriving ecosystem at Bolsa Chica. The wetlands and uplands at Bolsa Chica have endured much, from large oil fields and farming of the past to today’s impacts of pollution, urban stressors, sea-level rise, and climate change. The lands and waters here, sacred to the Native American tribes whose ancestors were the first to inhabit Bolsa Chica, in harmony, have been fragmented and long fought over. The Bolsa Chica Land Trust knows that our legacy is in the success of Bolsa Chica to provide habitats and protection for hundreds of species, it is in the endurance of these critical habitats to survive into the future, and for the community to learn from the natural wonders found here and to share in our desire to protect them. As Executive Director, I am honored to serve the members and Board of Directors of an organization that is so deeply unified to its purpose and always humbled by the flight of the Great Blue Heron and the buzz of the hummingbirds as they feed off of plants cared for by our volunteers. BCLT is always at work, and we still have so much more to accomplish. We welcome all who want to help, learn, and explore all that is Bolsa Chica.

Today, we are keenly aware of the fragility of our environment, and the protections previously placed on it. Now, more than ever we need to support our local natural environment. The efforts of the Bolsa Chica Land Trust over the course of our 32-year history have set precedents that have been used to protect wetlands and upland habitat throughout the state of California. BCLT’s long term relationships with state natural resource agencies, and the hard work we have done to back up our vision and support the Ecological Reserve, has brought the voice of the community to the forefront in Bolsa Chica’s preservation and future. Whereas in the past BCLT worked to protect Bolsa Chica from development, now we must protect it from even larger forces of a changing climate and rising sea. I am proud to be at the helm of an organization that will not shiver at these challenges. We put on our boots to nurture habitats, and we walk the halls of Sacramento to be a voice for the birds and wildlife that need Bolsa Chica. We take a stand for the health of the ocean which feeds our wetlands and will fight for green solutions to global issues. Our first priority is and always will be Bolsa Chica, yet we do not exist in a vacuum and know we need to be part of the bigger solutions. I invite you to talk to us, take a walk out on the trails with us, and support us, the Bolsa Chica Land Trust, as we help build a bright future for Bolsa Chica.