Photo credit: Anna Bride

Hello Friends,

Mendocino Land Trust has been buzzing with activity this summer. We kicked off the season with a 50th Anniversary party that had us dancing, toasting our volunteers, and spending time with friends, supporters, and community leaders. In July, our summer interns rolled out the welcome mats at Big River Beach, providing accessibility options for beach lovers of all abilities. We dedicated a long-loved trail in Caspar that will now officially be open forever. Our Stewardship team has been out monitoring conservation easements throughout the county, maintaining our 20 miles of trails, and planning new trail projects. Ongoing habitat restoration work is showing positive outcomes – ensuring that an endangered butterfly population is getting stronger. But we aren’t finished with summer just yet! Our super-fun annual fundraiser, the Noyo Headlands Race, is coming up this week on August 8 in Fort Bragg.

We value your input! Let us know if you enjoy receiving MLT news in this seasonal format, or would you prefer shorter, monthly or semi-monthly updates? We want to keep you informed without overloading your inbox. Let us know by taking this two-question survey, or, email us directly at info@mendocinolandtrust.org Thank you!

10th Annual Noyo Headlands Run - August 8th

Transitions: Executive Director Conrad Kramer Passes the Torch



After six years of dedicated service and visionary leadership, our Executive Director Conrad Kramer is moving on to new projects and horizons. Conrad has led Mendocino Land Trust through an exciting time by greatly expanding our capacity, holdings, staff, and reach.

MLT’s Board of Trustees is now looking to sustain this momentum as we hire a new Executive Director to lead our dedicated team.



As we wish Conrad all the best in his next chapter, we are excited to see what the next era of leadership will bring to Mendocino Land Trust and the community we serve. 

Emerging Conservationists: MLT's 2026 Summer Interns!

We are delighted to welcome the talented and hard-working Liana Edington and Aly King to the MLT staff this summer! MLT interns take over our social media accounts, help steward our trails and preserves, organize events, and generally go above and beyond every job at hand. Our summer interns bring talent, drive, and insight to the work. We hope they gain a fraction of what they contribute to our team over their 10-week term, and leave with fresh inspiration to protect this planet in the years ahead.

Photos by Liana Edington

My name is Liana Edington. I grew up in Ukiah and have lived and explored all over Mendocino County. I’m also a Mendocino College student majoring in Agriculture and eventually Environmental Science. My biggest passion in life is learning how things work. Everything fits together like a puzzle that I slowly get to put together. My secondary passion is nature. Getting to put them together? A dream. I’m especially drawn to flowers and bugs. My friends call me the bug guy. I’m excited to learn more about conservation and fully explore this wonderful field with MLT this summer.

A Perfect Day on the Coast: Caspar Pond Trail Dedication

Great news for birders, walkers, and visitors to the Mendocino Coast! Thanks to a generous grant from the Mendocino Coast Audubon Society, the foresight of a selfless landowner, and the support of the Caspar community, MLT officially opened the Caspar Pond Trail to the public on July 25. 

60 people turned out, including members of the Mendocino Coast Audubon Society, the Mendocino Coast Chamber of Commerce, and a strong showing of Caspar residents. Landowner Michael St. John donated this public access easement to Mendocino Land Trust, and was honored with a plaque bearing his name (to be installed on a bench overlooking the pond). Right on cue, a great blue heron lifted itself from the pond, swooped low over the crowd, and sent our hearts soaring.

The project came together thanks to the work of MLT’s Land Protection Manager, Matt Franks, who shares, "It's been immensely rewarding to help open this unique spot to the public forever, and to see such an outpouring of appreciation from locals for MLT's work and for the generosity of Michael and all our partners who have supported this project." 

Caspar Pond Trail is located just off the east side of Highway One, at Fern Creek Road, and has been used as an informal community trail and birding hotspot for years. This gentle, ⅓ mile trail is a wide path, wrapping around a small pond that hosts a fantastic array of ducks, songbirds, and migrating species. Cornell’s eBird site lists mallards, cliff swallows, Canada geese, violet-green swallows, American goldfinches, and ospreys among the many species known to frequent the site.

MLT maintains nine public access trail easements totaling over four miles of coastal trail segments, but the Caspar Pond Trail is the first trail easement donated by a landowner with the sole purpose of preserving a special community trail long into the future. MLT and the Caspar community are deeply grateful for this gift. The grant from Mendocino Coast Audubon Society is funded by a bequest from Huldie Schoener Clark, whose love for ducks moved her to donate her estate to fund bird-related scholarship, research, and conservation projects like the Caspar Pond Trail. Please note that dogs are not allowed at Caspar Pond.

Beach Accessibility Day: Rolling Out the Mats at Big River

On Saturday, July 18, we rolled out the mats for the Big River Beach Accessibility Day. MLT’s summer interns, Liana and Aly collaborated with Leslie’s Accessible Walks and MendoParks (Mendocino Parks Association) to organize an event that welcomed members of our community who don’t always have access to beaches and sandy terrains. We rolled out 500 feet of beach mats, and had a variety of accessibility equipment on offer, including five beach wheelchairs, two Freedom Trax motorized track systems for use with manual wheelchairs, and one beach walker. MLT Board member Paul Miller hosted a birdwatching station with an impressive array of scopes, binoculars, and birding info (one scope trained on a pair of nesting great blue herons!).

The accessibility program came to life thanks to a grant from Orange County Coastkeeper. MLT now has a beach wheelchair and walker, along with 300 feet of beach mats. MendoParks received a similar grant to purchase the Freedom Trax equipment and 200 feet of beach mats. California State Parks also has accessibility equipment available at MacKerricher State Park and Van Damme State Park. All three organizations offer this equipment at no charge. To reserve State Parks’ beach wheelchair at MacKerricher State Park in Fort Bragg, call (707) 962-9112; advance notice is required. Leslie Krongold hosts accessible outings throughout the year through her program, Leslie’s Accessible Walks.



Please reach out to MLT if there is specific outdoor accessibility equipment you would like to see available on the Mendocino Coast. If you would like to reserve our beach wheelchair or beach walker, visit our Beach Accessibility webpage. Please give us 5 days’ notice if you would like the equipment delivered. We can arrange pickup faster if you have a vehicle with enough room for the equipment, depending on staffing and availability.

Pollinator Conservation Update!

If you are following our multi-year Wildlife Conservation Board (WCB) pollinator grant project, you know that we have been actively restoring coastal prairie habitats to nurture endangered Behren’s silverspot butterflies and other pollinators. We’ve received questions about the success of these plots and can report that most of them are thriving. The few that have succumbed to hungry gophers will be replanted next winter. Since 2024, MLT has worked with State Parks, BLM Ukiah, and Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation to plant thousands of pollinator-supporting native plants, testing planting methods and monitoring success with each planting phase. Establishing healthy, self-supporting plots of early blue violets (Viola adunca) is required for the butterflies’ lifecycle and for the success of the conservation program.



The other side of the program is the captive rearing of Behren’s silverspot butterflies for release into suitable habitats. We have good news from the field – 100 more healthy adult butterflies have been released this summer, according to program partner Christine Damiani of the Sequoia Park Zoo Butterfly Conservation Program, who oversees the captive rearing program. This year the team “tattooed” individuals with silver sharpie dots so that they could be tracked and identified later in the season. This process does not harm the butterflies. The Behren’s team is hopeful that these tandem restoration and conservation efforts will ensure generations of Behren’s silverspot butterflies to come.

Lightning Alert! 

We’ve gone electric! Thanks to Sonoma Clean Power’s Nonprofit Electric Vehicle Rebate program, Mendocino Land Trust was able to add a much-needed town and field truck to our fleet. We’ve been looking at upgrading our affectionately-named work truck, Rusty, for some time, but a new truck was out of reach for our budget. SCP’s rebate program made this purchase possible.

Our new-to-us, all-electric Ford F-150 Lightning EV increases our capacity to do field work, site visits, and volunteer days – all without directly using fossil fuels. The ride is quieter, smoother (even on gnarly 4WD dirt roads!), and simply a more enjoyable driving experience than our other vehicles. We promise we aren’t fighting over it! MLT staff has used the new EV to power events, including showing our 50th anniversary film, Conservation Forever, from the front hood at our big celebration, and powering a 5K/10K run at Big River with a partner nonprofit. The Lightning also appeared in Mendocino’s iconic 4th of July Parade – festooned with flowers and surrounded by dancing (human) butterflies. The increased cargo capacity is a huge plus: at our recent beach accessibility day at Big River, we hauled 300 feet of beach mats and several beach wheelchairs, along with tents, tables, and chairs.

We are thrilled to switch from gas to electric power, and grateful that SCP’s EV Rebate Program helps us to align our work with our mission of conservation.

THANK YOU!!

NOYO HEADLANDS RACE SPONSORS

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