San Bruno Mountain Watch

San Bruno Mountain is a 3,600-acre island of biodiversity surrounded by a sea of urbanization. Located just south of San Francisco, it’s the largest and closest wilderness to a population of over 1 million people. Encompassing grasslands, ancient oak forests, and riparian habitats, parts of San Bruno Mountain are remarkably intact – it’s home to 13 rare and endangered species and 3 endangered butterflies. However, its native ecosystems are under constant attack from development, invasion of exotic species, and biological imbalances due to global warming.

 

San Bruno Mountain Watch has been protecting and preserving the wilderness of San Bruno Mountain for 45 years. Our programs are focused on three areas: land conservation, native habitat stewardship, and public engagement and education. We have been an instrumental force in protecting the mountain from encroaching urbanization, and have preserved hundreds of acres of wilderness from development. Our outreach program includes several public hikes a month, connecting local residents to a rare and thriving ecosystem that is miraculously near to their homes. We also run a comprehensive ecological conservation and biological restoration and maintenance program that draws on hundreds of volunteers each year. Many of our volunteers return year after year, finding that the work gives them a personal relationship to the wilderness and to each other. All of our programs seek to instill the importance of biodiversity in today’s changing world to the area’s urban population.

 

Our organization is currently in a growth cycle. Our native plant nursery, The Mission Blue Nursery, has grown exponentially for the last two years, and is on target to continue this trajectory. The 2,000 square foot volunteer built facility allows us to nurture native seeds collected from San Bruno Mountain, propagate them, and replant them onto the mountain to combat weed invasions. Four times a year, our nursery is open to the public so that local residents can buy plants and plant them in their gardens to grow native habitats at home. This year, we have also added a new Executive Director, Kris Jensen, and a new fulltime Stewardship Coordinator, Iris Clearwater.

 

We welcome hundreds of volunteers and hikers each year, and invite you to join us!