Thursday,

March 13, 2025

3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

In-person / Zoom hybrid

Join Us In-Person!



Please consider joining us at the meeting at MCL offices. More opportunity to interact!

Paul da Silva



Danny Franco

Sara Hutto



Shelly Benson

Join us at the March 13 Parks and Open Space Committee to identify important Marin actions to take for preserving biodiversity and ecosystem health, in the face of climate change.

Our most vulnerable habitats and species information have recently been identified by several Marin Agency efforts, and we will get their perspective, and share a conversation on what is most vulnerable and what we can do about it. 

Contributors include:

Paul da Silva, retired professor of Marin Community College, will give input from the International Level from Biodiversity COP 2024.   Dr. Paul da Silva is a local biologist, environmentalist, and educator. He has a B.A. in ecology, an M.S. in resource management and a PhD in entomology. He has studied population and community ecology in different natural and agricultural habitats in California and abroad. He taught biology, natural history and environmental science for many years at the College of Marin before retiring and being elected to the college’s Board of Trustees, where he continues to serve. 

Danny Franco, Senior Project Manager for the Parks Conservancy, will contribute his knowledge of the GG Biosphere Network Vulnerability Assessment, and OneTams' Peak Health Report.  Danny Franco, Senior Project Manager, has been working with the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy for 14 years, primarily on natural resource conservation, vegetation management, and landscape scale habitat restoration projects. Since 2018, Danny has managed delivery of fine scale vegetation mapping and landscape database projects in Marin, San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz counties, which included regional collaboration of over two dozen local, state, and federal land managing agencies and partners. In 2023 Danny led completion of the Marin Regional Forest Health Strategy, an initiative of the One Tam collaborative that provides a framework for advancing multi-benefit cross-jurisdictional projects that will improve forest resilience and protect biodiversity. 

Sara Hutto, Resilience and Restoration Specialist for the Greater Farallon’s National Marine Sanctuaries, will share the vulnerability and action highlights from the Greater Farallon’s Vulnerability Assessment. Sara has worked in marine resource management for 15 years, and specialize in climate-smart adaptive management of marine protected areas. Her work has been featured and recognized nationally and internationally.

Shelly Benson, Plant Ecologist and Lichenologist, will share her knowledge on the rare perennial prairies of Marin and the status of mapping them. Sara has been a self-employed botanist for 15 years after working for both ICF International and the US forest Service. She has located native grasslands and prepared maps for Marin County. She is also President of the California Lichen Society. She has a MS in Lichen Ecology and a BS in Plant Ecology with a minor in Chemistry.

MCL JOINS CALIFORNIA ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS IN OPPOSING AB 306

March 5th, MCL joined 50 California Environmental Groups with a combined 152,000 members in writing to the legislature opposing AB 306. The bill, while intending to avoid imposing new building code requirements on homeowners rebuilding from the LA fires, would have the effect of freezing California Green Building Code updates and potentially other efforts to reduce GHG emissions from buildings statewide from 2025-2031. Doing so would also miss an opportunity to electrify at a neighborhood level the communities rebuilt after the devastating fires. Neighborhood electrification would result in lower rebuilding costs than reinstalling both gas and electric lines.

Read The Opposition Letter