Restoring Biodiversity and Reconnecting People to Place After Fire

Southern California Monarch & Biodiversity Stewardship Initiative

Project Story

Southern California is one of the most biologically important places in the world, yet it is also one of the most environmentally vulnerable. The Santa Monica Mountains sit within the California Floristic Province, a global biodiversity hotspot where thousands of native plant and wildlife species exist alongside one of the largest urban populations in the United States. These landscapes support wildlife movement, pollinators, native plant communities, watersheds, cultural history, and an essential connection between people and nature in Southern California.

We believe restoration is about more than repairing damaged habitat. It is about rebuilding relationships between people and the living systems around them.

Across Southern California, climate change, prolonged drought, invasive species, habitat fragmentation, and increasingly destructive wildfires continue to place growing pressure on native ecosystems. In recent years, major fires throughout the region have burned hundreds of thousands of acres, damaging wildlife habitat, destabilizing slopes and watersheds, increasing invasive species pressure, and disrupting ecological systems that many native species depend upon to survive. Recovery is not immediate. It takes years of restoration, stewardship, native plant growing, monitoring, and long-term ecological care to help these landscapes recover in ways that strengthen resilience for the future.

At the same time, many people are becoming increasingly disconnected from the natural systems around them. In one of the largest urban regions in the country, fewer people have opportunities to directly participate in ecological stewardship or experience the biodiversity that still exists within Southern California’s landscapes.

This project responds to both challenges through community-led restoration, biodiversity stewardship, native plant propagation, pollinator habitat recovery, wildfire recovery efforts, and applied ecological learning across the Santa Monica Mountains and greater Los Angeles region.

Our work focuses on restoring habitat for monarch butterflies and other native pollinators while strengthening broader ecological resilience throughout the region. Native plants and pollinator habitat are essential to healthy ecosystems, supporting biodiversity, wildlife movement, watershed health, and climate resilience across Southern California. Through this project, we grow and distribute native plants and milkweed, restore degraded habitat, support post-fire recovery efforts, engage communities in restoration activities, and help create healthier and more resilient landscapes for both wildlife and people.

Community participation is central to this work.

Through the SAMO Field Institute, youth, volunteers, educators, and community members participate directly in restoration and stewardship through field-based learning, native seed collection, habitat restoration, biodiversity observation, ecological monitoring, and hands-on conservation experiences. Participants learn by doing while developing a deeper understanding of biodiversity, wildfire recovery, native ecosystems, and long-term environmental stewardship in Southern California.

This work creates opportunities for people to actively participate in restoring the landscapes around them. Restoration sites become places of learning, connection, stewardship, and community resilience. Young people gain direct field experience and environmental leadership opportunities. Volunteers participate in meaningful ecological recovery efforts. Community members engage with native landscapes in ways that help foster long-term care for local ecosystems.

We believe long-term ecological resilience depends on building a broader culture of stewardship rooted in participation, care, and connection to place.

By combining biodiversity conservation, wildfire recovery, native plant growing, pollinator habitat restoration, ecological learning, and public participation, this project helps restore both ecosystems and relationships between people and the landscapes that sustain life in Southern California.

Our Experience

Santa Monica Mountains Fund is the official nonprofit partner of the National Park Service and California State Parks in the Santa Monica Mountains. We support biodiversity conservation, habitat restoration, urban greening, environmental education, native plant growing, youth workforce development, and community stewardship across one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, the California Floristic Province.

Our work includes wildfire recovery, native seed collection, pollinator habitat restoration, applied ecology programs, community stewardship events, ecological restoration projects, and hands-on environmental education that directly connects people to the protection and restoration of Southern California’s ecosystems. Through partnerships, volunteer engagement, youth workforce programs, restoration crews, and field-based learning experiences, we help communities actively participate in caring for the landscapes around them while building long-term ecological resilience across the region.