We are thrilled to enter into a new year with a new look as we celebrate the Catalina Island Conservancy’s 50th Anniversary. For the last half century and counting, the Conservancy has been preserving Catalina Island’s timeless nature.

In 1972, members of the Wrigley and Offield families established the Catalina Island Conservancy as a nonprofit organization dedicated to the restoration and protection of Catalina’s wildlands. Later, Helen and Philip K. Wrigley along with Dorothy Wrigley Offield, through Santa Catalina Island Company, signed the paperwork that deeded more than 42,000 acres of Catalina to the Catalina Island Conservancy. Today the Conservancy preserves the Island’s wildlands and wildlife, helps the public enjoy Catalina’s natural offerings and promotes learning about Catalina Island and conservation.

In the past 50 years, we have made instrumental strides in protecting the Island’s crucial flora and fauna, including the recovery of bald eagles and endemic Catalina Island foxes. The Conservancy has educated and engaged hundreds of thousands of children and adults about the uniqueness of Catalina Island and the importance of nature and has provided crucial access to nature to inspire wonderment and encourage healthy minds and bodies.

The Conservancy will be celebrating our anniversary with events including our iconic Annual Conservancy Ball on April 23, 2022. With your help, we cannot wait to continue this important work into the future for another 50 years and beyond.

Los Angeles Conservation Corps has just finished repairing an extremely important resource on Catalina Island – White’s Landing Exclosure. The exclosure is home to nine Channel Island Endemic and five Catalina Island Endemic species, such as Catalina Island Manzanita and two groves of the Catalina Island Ironwood. Plants on Catalina have been threatened by non-native grazers, and exclosures ensure that deer don’t eat some of the Island’s most important resources. Species such as the Channel Island Tree Poppy and Felt leaf Ceanothus only grow in areas deer can’t access.

To learn more about plants in the White’s Exclosure, take a virtual tour created by one of our interns Cole Baumann.  

Dust off your tuxedos and ballgowns! Stow your bunny slippers and don your dancing shoes! Let's celebrate A Groovy View Since '72 together at the 26th Annual Catalina Island Conservancy Ball! Join us as a Ball sponsor as we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Catalina Island Conservancy in style. Ball sponsors play a critical role in helping the Conservancy fund our vital conservation, education and recreation programming. As a sponsor, you receive access to the exclusive Pre-Ball Sponsor Reception with priority check-in before you make your way to the historic Casino Ballroom for dinner, dancing and celebrating into the night. Sponsorships are on sale now!

To promote outdoor engagement and learning within the community, Catalina Island Conservancy is excited to reimagine our existing field trip program with Avalon School as Island Explorers. There are about 240 children in grades kindergarten through 5th on Catalina that will benefit from this free program. We are grateful to the National Recreation Foundation for a gracious grant that has enabled the Conservancy to take an already successful experience of getting kids out in nature and make it an even deeper adventure that broadens learning through home, school and community. Learn more about our Education programs.

562.437.8555 • www.catalinaconservancy.org

CATALINA ISLAND CONSERVANCY • P.O. Box 2739 • Avalon, CA 90704