Environmental Nature Center

The mission of the Environmental Nature Center is to provide transformative experiences through connection with nature. Its vision is to provide equitable access and inspire all to protect the natural world by serving as our community’s leader in ecological responsibility, sustainable practices and environmental education.

In 1972, teachers, students, and community volunteers transformed an abandoned gully beside Newport Harbor High School into a place where children could experience and learn from the natural world. More than 50 years later, the Environmental Nature Center (ENC) has grown into a leading environmental education organization serving more than 30,000 children, families, educators, and community members each year.

ENC's five-acre Newport Beach campus showcases 15 California native plant communities, along with walking trails, an amphitheater, a seasonal butterfly house, fossil specimens, and a Compost Learning Lab. At the heart of the campus is the 8,500-square-foot Learning Center and Museum, which became Orange County's first LEED Platinum-certified building when it opened in 2008. Together, these indoor and outdoor spaces serve as a living classroom for school field trips, Traveling Naturalist programs, nature camps, community events, volunteer experiences, and educational programs for people of all ages.

In 2019, ENC opened the ENC Nature Preschool, Orange County's first nature-based preschool, serving up to 72 children each day through immersive outdoor, STEM, and nature-based learning. The preschool is LEED Platinum certified and has also earned Petal Certification through the International Living Future Institute's rigorous Living Building Challenge, making it a model for both nature-based early childhood education and sustainable design.

ENC expanded its reach in 2021 with the acquisition of the 12-acre ENC Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary in Modjeska Canyon. With native habitats, trails, a natural history museum, amphitheater, bird observation areas, and other educational spaces, Tucker provides a distinctly different setting for field trips, camps, public programs, workshops, and opportunities to experience Southern California's wildlife and natural ecosystems firsthand.

Sustainability is woven into both ENC's educational programs and its daily operations. The Newport Beach campus has earned TRUE Zero Waste Platinum certification from Green Business Certification Inc., consistently diverting approximately 97% of its waste from landfill. Its native landscapes, green buildings, composting practices, and resource-conscious operations allow visitors to see sustainable practices in action rather than simply learn about them in theory.

From its beginnings as a volunteer effort in an abandoned gully to today's two nature campuses and nationally recognized sustainable facilities, ENC has remained rooted in a simple idea: direct experiences with nature can change the way people understand and care for the world around them.

The Environmental Nature Center's impact begins with direct experience. A child turns over a log and discovers what lives beneath it, watches a butterfly emerge, plants a native plant, follows an animal track, or recognizes for the first time that the plants and wildlife in their own neighborhood are part of an interconnected living system. These experiences build curiosity, knowledge, confidence, and a personal connection to the natural world.

Each year, ENC provides hands-on environmental education to thousands of students through field trips, Traveling Naturalist programs, nature camps, and community programs. Rather than learning about nature only from books or screens, participants investigate real ecosystems, ask questions, make observations, and learn through discovery. Our programs help children understand ecological concepts while developing the curiosity and critical-thinking skills that support learning far beyond a single visit.

For young children, ENC Nature Preschool integrates nature into everyday learning, giving up to 72 children each day opportunities to explore, take appropriate risks, solve problems, create, and develop confidence outdoors. Scholarships help make these experiences available to families who might otherwise be unable to participate.

ENC's impact also extends beyond children. Families, teachers, volunteers, gardeners, and community members gain knowledge and practical ways to care for the places where they live—from growing California native plants and creating wildlife habitat to reducing waste and conserving natural resources.

Across all of this work, ENC seeks a lasting outcome: people who know the natural world are more likely to value it, and people who value it are more likely to care for it. By creating meaningful experiences in nature, ENC helps cultivate informed, curious, and engaged people who carry that connection into their homes, schools, neighborhoods, and communities.

As the Environmental Nature Center's programs, properties, and community reach continue to grow, philanthropic support is essential to ensuring that ENC can care for its campuses, retain exceptional staff, expand access to environmental education, and invest thoughtfully in its future. Current priorities include:

Expanding Access to Environmental Education

- Provide scholarships and subsidized field trips, camps, preschool experiences, and other programs for children and families who might otherwise be unable to participate.
- Expand access for Title I schools and other schools facing financial barriers to hands-on environmental education.
- Support transportation and other costs that can prevent schools and families from accessing nature-based learning opportunities.

Investing in People and Organizational Capacity

- Provide competitive compensation, benefits, professional development, and training to recruit and retain skilled educators, horticulture and land-stewardship professionals, and other essential staff.
- Strengthen staffing and operational capacity at ENC Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary as programming, visitation, and stewardship responsibilities grow.
- Build organizational capacity to ensure ENC's programs and properties remain strong and sustainable for the next generation.

Caring for and Enhancing ENC's Campuses

- Invest in native habitat enhancement, horticulture, land stewardship, trails, irrigation, accessibility, and other infrastructure at ENC's Newport Beach and Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary campuses.
- Expand native plant propagation and horticultural education to support ENC landscapes, educational programs, community plant sales, and other mission-related activities.
- Address aging infrastructure and make improvements that enhance visitor experiences while protecting the ecological character of both properties.

Building Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary's Future

- Continue developing Tucker as a thriving center for environmental education, native horticulture, wildlife observation, and community learning.
- Develop the historic Tucker residence as a human-history interpretive space, building upon artifacts already being assembled and displayed to tell the stories of the people who have lived in, worked in, and shaped this landscape over time. Funding is needed for historical research, exhibit development, interpretation, signage, and appropriate display materials. Interpretation of Indigenous history will be developed in consultation with appropriate Tribal representatives to ensure that these stories are presented accurately, respectfully, and with the perspectives of the people whose history is being shared.
- Improve essential infrastructure, including water and utility capacity, to support responsible management of the property and its growing educational and horticultural uses.
- Advance long-term plans for an environmentally responsible museum and administrative building that will expand Tucker's capacity for education, interpretation, programs, and visitor services.

Ensuring Long-Term Financial Sustainability

- Retire remaining debt associated with the ENC Nature Preschool.
- Increase unrestricted and general operating support, giving ENC the flexibility to respond to emerging needs, maintain its properties, support its staff, and invest where resources can have the greatest impact.

Support for these priorities allows ENC to do more than expand programs. It ensures that the people, places, and infrastructure behind those programs remain strong—so that ENC can continue providing transformative experiences through connection with nature for generations to come.

The Environmental Nature Center primarily serves communities throughout Orange County, with two campuses that provide access to distinctly different Southern California environments. Our five-acre Newport Beach campus serves communities throughout coastal and central Orange County and lies within the Newport Bay watershed. The 12-acre ENC Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary in Modjeska Canyon, located within the Santiago Creek watershed in the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains, extends our reach into inland Orange County and provides opportunities to experience a very different landscape, ecology, and sense of place.

ENC's reach extends beyond its physical campuses through Traveling Naturalist programs delivered at schools and community locations throughout the region. School field trips, nature camps, preschool programs, public events, workshops, and other educational opportunities draw participants from communities across Orange County and neighboring areas.

Together, ENC's two campuses connect people with environments ranging from the coastal landscapes of the Newport Bay watershed to the oak woodlands and chaparral of the Santa Ana Mountains. These places provide living classrooms for understanding how watersheds, native plants, wildlife, people, and communities are interconnected.

While Orange County is our primary service area, ENC welcomes visitors and program participants from throughout Southern California and beyond.

Since 1972, the Environmental Nature Center has been built around a simple but powerful idea: when people experience nature firsthand, they begin to understand it, value it, and care for it.

What began with teachers, students, and community volunteers transforming an abandoned gully into a place for learning has grown into an organization that provides transformative experiences through connection with nature for more than 30,000 children and adults each year. At our Newport Beach campus and ENC Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary, and through programs that reach schools throughout the region, we give people opportunities to explore, ask questions, make discoveries, and develop their own relationship with the natural world.

More than 50 years after ENC began, that work feels more important than ever. Children are growing up with fewer opportunities for unstructured time outdoors, while the natural communities around us face increasing pressures from habitat loss, climate change, and declining biodiversity. We believe one of the most important things ENC can do is help people know the places where they live—its plants and wildlife, its seasons and landscapes—and understand that they are part of those places, too.

As we look toward ENC's next 50 years, we remain committed to caring for these remarkable places, making nature-based education accessible to more people, and creating experiences that foster curiosity, connection, and a lasting desire to care for the natural world.

For more than 50 years, the Environmental Nature Center has grown because people in our community believed that connecting people with nature was worth investing in. As Board Chair, I am proud to be part of an organization with such deep roots in Orange County and such an exciting future ahead.

ENC's strength comes from the people who make its mission possible—dedicated educators and staff, volunteers, families, donors, community collaborators, and generations of children who have learned and explored here. Together, they have helped ENC grow from a grassroots community effort into an organization with two remarkable nature campuses, an innovative Nature Preschool, and educational programs that reach thousands of people throughout our region.

As a Board, we have a responsibility not only to support ENC's work today, but to ensure that this organization and the places entrusted to its care remain strong for generations to come. That means investing in our people, caring for and enhancing our campuses, expanding access to environmental education, and thoughtfully planning for the future of both our Newport Beach campus and ENC Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary.

We are deeply grateful to everyone who chooses to be part of this work. Your time, generosity, and belief in ENC allow us to create experiences that can stay with a child—or an adult—for a lifetime. Together, we are ensuring that future generations will have places where they can experience nature firsthand, understand the world around them, and discover their own reasons to care for it.