Recently, our friends at Sonoma Land Trust announced acquisition of a 40-acre property near Hood Mountain Regional Park. The rugged and undeveloped canyon land, home to breeding steelhead and “the last stand of redwoods in the upper Santa Rosa Creek watershed,” augments the already indispensable Sonoma Valley Wildlife Corridor – a cornerstone of our local environment which Sonoma Ecology Center played an important role in creating.

As described in a recent blog post, the amazing Christy Vreeland, a longtime volunteer at the Ecology Center, had a vision in the 1990s that a wildlife corridor could connect undeveloped land from Sonoma Mountain to the Mayacamas and beyond. We brought together the community, elected officials, and state and local agencies to create the Wildlife Corridor and establish foundations that would take it into the future.

Christy Vreeland has since passed away, but the Wildlife Corridor lives on. We are grateful to her, and proud to have helped her make her vision a reality. The new 40-acre property, which will soon be ceded to Hood Mountain Regional Park, is only the latest chapter in this inspiring local story.