Strategic Campaigns
The Sierra Fund works to leverage small action to large effect by generating new private and public conservation investments in the Sierra Nevada and strategically directing those resources to yield the greatest conservation benefit. The Integrated Sierra Investment Strategy (ISIS) represents a collective vision of how to achieve this. ISIS serves as The Sierra Fund’s blueprint, laying out a detailed set of strategies and priorities essential to securing the vitality of the Sierra Nevada.
Present and past strategic campaigns include:
Sierra Nevada Mining's Toxic Legacy Initiative: This Initiative is the first-ever comprehensive look at how to assess and address the long-term health and environmental impacts of the California Gold Rush.
Sierra Nevada Specialty License Plate Campaign: This campaign was aimed at securing ongoing, sustainable funding for the Sierra Nevada Conservancy’s grant programs.
Protecting Truckee and Lake Tahoe: Litigation by Sierra Watch and the League to Save Lake Tahoe created a conservation fund making available up to $30 million in new conservation dollars for land acquisition in Martis Valley, and stopped unreasonable development.
A Network of Citizen Water Quality Monitors: Through a low-interest bridge loan from The Sierra Fund, the Sierra Nevada Alliance successfully implemented a 3-year, $300,000 Sierra Watershed Program to train hundreds of citizen water quality monitoring teams on rivers and streams in the Sierra Nevada.
Restoring the Wild Salmon on the Yuba River: A grant from The Sierra Fund allowed implementation of an aggressive educational and advocacy campaign to develop community and statewide support for restoration of native wild salmon and steelhead to the Yuba River. The campaign included successfully advocating for the removal of one dam and the modification of another.
Building the Capacity of the Region’s Land Trusts: The Sierra Fund made a series of
investments in the Sierra Cascade Land Trust Council. In addition to a substantial expansion of the Council’s organizational capacities, a needs assessment was carried out that articulated a need for approximately $700 million over five years to complete identified conservation projects on threatened Sierra landscapes.
Sierra Checkerboard Solutions: The Sierra Fund made grants to allow the California Wilderness Coalition and Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign to participate in the development of a regional approach to protecting more than 300,000 acres of central Sierra forestland in mixed public/private ownership.
Sustainable Farms and Ranches: The Sierra Fund provided over $100,000 in grants to
the Community Alliance with Family Farmers and the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center to support the implementation of Californians for GE-Free Agriculture: a major, multi-organizational partnership to educate farmers in the Sierra foothills and the Central Valley about the true costs and effects of genetically modified seeds, and to advocate against the planting of genetically engineered crops in California.