Please join us by Zoom on Monday noon in a conversation with Meredith Hendricks, Executive Director of the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County. Zoom address, click here.
The Land Trust for Santa Barbara County is one of the jewels in the 501(c)(3) non-profit world. Since 1985, supported by more than 900 members with a volunteer board of trustees, it has worked with community groups, partners, and willing landowners, for instance, recent CPA honorees, Art and the late Sherry Hibbitts, to conserve, restore, and manage open space, wildlife habitat, and, as the Hibbitts’s, family farms and ranches throughout the county.
The Land Trust has been recently in the news locally about the Modoc Preserve, protected under a conservation easement. Other properties protected include the Arroyo Hondo Preserve, Sedgwick Reserve, Carpinteria Bluffs, the Coronado Butterfly Preserve, the Carpinteria Salt Marsh, several Gaviota Coast ranches….
In November 2020, the Land Trust, becoming increasingly more active, with several significant conservation projects as well as finalizing conservation easements, invited Meredith Hendricks to become its new Executive Director. By the summer of 2021, the organization’s total conserved acreage was 45,000 acres!
Meredith’s family history in ranching dates to the late 1800s in Goleta and informed much of her work in conservation nonprofit leadership for the last 20 years in northern California. Her career there focused on permanently conserving land for future generations and developing public open space in the San Francisco Bay Area, including 7 years as the Director of Land Programs at the nationally accredited land trust, Save Mount Diablo.
Among Meredith’s most important career accomplishments is the creation of the Dr. Mary Bowerman Science and Research Program, providing small grants, especially to students, for research projects on Save Mount Diablo’s properties and protected land network in the Bay Area. She also successfully worked on the expansion of the regional Marsh Creek Trail network and was instrumental in protecting the last 95 acres of historic Anderson Ranch.
We look forward to hearing how the work is proceeding on the Land Trust’s goal to create a signature preserve — like the Arroyo Hondo Preserve — for the communities of Santa Maria Valley and about the special challenges – and charms – of land use in Santa Barbara County.
Join the conversation via Zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84071957936?pwd=WHBSa1VQWDh1YXF5bzhDTERvS2hpQT09