Happy New Year! Midpen resolves to preserve, restore and open more public lands in 2019, and create more connections between you and your local open space. Read below for a few of the exciting ways we're doing this.
Spend More Time in Nature This Year
Start 2019 off in your open space preserves. Midpen docents offer free activities for a variety of ages, interests and abilities each month. Join an exercise-focused hike with beautiful scenery, explore redwood forests for fascinating fungus, watch wildlife in the bay on a leisurely paced birding walk and more!
Get to Know Your Wildlife Neighbors
After recent sightings in Rancho San Antonio Open Space, Midpen's most-visited preserve, staff and volunteers spent time talking to hundreds of visitors there about what to do if they see a mountain lion, the challenges these animals are facing and the important role they play in our ecosystem. Scientist Winston Vickers is creating a series of short videos helping us all better understand and appreciate these amazing animals. Check out this first episode.
Midpen Community Grants
Does your organization have a great idea for a project that would enhance and protect natural resources and support opportunities for outdoor recreation and education in and around Midpen preserves? Make it happen through our new Grantmaking Program providing up to $50,000 for public, private, academic and non-profit organizations with qualifying projects. Applications will be accepted beginning in February.
Join Midpen in Creating Defensible Space
Midpen recently partnered with the San Jose Conservation Corps to create defensible space in Windy Hill Open Space Preserve. The project made the local community more fire safe while benefitting local youth.
Fire is a fact of life in California. Our challenge is to learn how to live safely with it. Wildfire prevention and public safety have always been central to Midpen's work, and we're expanding our efforts as California faces a "new normal" where wildfire frequency and severity is exacerbated by the effects of climate change. If you live next to a Midpen preserve, join our efforts by using our Defensible Space Program to help make your home and community safer.
Defensible Space Program details
Connect through Outdoor Service
Contribute to the open spaces you love by helping to restore and maintain trails and preserves with Midpen's outdoor service projects. No experience is necessary; staff provide all training and tools. Midpen also facilitates special group projects for schools, churches and companies interested in community service.