Climate Change Solutions

We need a focused and coordinated effort among diverse partners to achieve California’s goals and protect our remaining wetlands. That’s why TNC, the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI), The Pew Charitable Trusts and partners have created the Wetlands for Climate Partnership to leverage complementary strengths in science, policy development, funding, community and on-the-ground wetland conservation. The goal of the partnership is to break down existing barriers to accelerate wetland protection and restoration. We will ensure more intentional, long-range planning and management efforts that benefit wildlife and people, especially those most vulnerable to climate impacts.

California's coastline constitutes a more than 3,000-mile-long treasure, one that is vital to our economy and home to an abundance of plants and animals, many of which exist only in California. With the Pacific Ocean projected to rise five feet in some coastal areas of California by 2100 under business-as-usual carbon emissions, we need to take action. If we want to preserve what remains of our iconic coastline and protect people and wildlife from climate impacts, we need to safeguard the coast of tomorrow by using wetlands to combat the impacts of sea-level rise.

With its rich peat soil and more than 750 species of plants and animals, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is vital to maintaining California’s vibrant biodiversity and is a major source of water for nature, cities and agriculture alike. But human impacts and climate change are threatening the Delta, and carbon emissions from current farming practices are contributing to the climate crisis.

However, science shows that there is a path forward. Cultivating native wetlands and changing agricultural land management practices—such as converting corn crops to rice—lead to reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, increased carbon sequestration, reduced subsidence and improved peat soils. These solutions, often referred to as carbon farming, provide a climate- and habitat-smart strategy to restore the Delta and maintain economic farms and the vital services the region provides.

TNC and our partners are putting this science into practice by using a mosaic approach to farming, cultivating rice and other crops as we restore adjacent wetlands. By the year 2058, this mosaic operation will provide an estimated cumulative reduction in GHG emissions of up to 549,000 metric tons of CO₂ equivalent, which is equivalent to the carbon sequestered by planting more than 9 million tree seedlings and letting them grow for 10 years. We’re also restoring 100 acres of wetlands to further reduce GHG emissions, in a process that also leads to improved peat soil and creates critical habitat for birds, such as sandhill cranes.

California’s natural and working lands have a role to play in addressing sea-level rise. TNC and the California State Coastal Conservancy’s scientific study, Conserving California’s Coastal Habitat: A Legacy and a Future with Sea Level Rise, contains key strategies to protect our coast and coastal wetlands. One of these is to protect and restore future coastal habitat to allow widllife to migrate inland, which also sequesters carbon and enhances the resilience of coastal areas to protect against the impacts of climate change.

One of the greatest opportunities to conserve future habitat in California is the lower Pajaro River on the central coast. We’re working with the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County and other partners to restore a recently acquired property at the Pajaro River Estuary, returning vulnerable agricultural lands to coastal marsh so they can better absorb floodwaters and sea-level rise. This also provides habitat for native species and helps protect important farmland from flooding and storm surges, and we hope it can be a model for other coastal communities.

TNC is demonstrating the benefits of nature-based solutions in Los Angeles with the Bowtie Wetland Demonstration. By transforming an abandoned railyard into an open space filled with native plants, flowing water and walking paths, this project creates a highly visible model for urban wetland creation and habitat enhancement. It shows how habitat, water treatment, public access and climate resilience can combine in one place. While demonstrating what the future of the Los Angeles River and surrounding region could be, the project also allows TNC to gather important data and lessons learned to accelerate the implementation of nature-based solutions across the state.

After establishing the preserve in 2010, TNC launched our first forest restoration efforts on these 2,300 acres. To protect the lake’s threatened Lahontan cutthroat trout and reduce the risk of high-severity wildfire, we are applying thinning and prescribed fire. We pair this work with on-the-ground science to understand the impacts of forest treatments on understory plant biodiversity, forest structure and diversity, and fuel loads. We are also working with the Washoe Tribe, the original stewards of this land, who guide and implement these prescribed burns with TNC.

In 2015, TNC brought together state, federal and local partners—including the local water utility—for this first-of-its-kind collaboration. The group took the same restoration approach used at Independence Lake and scaled it in a 2,800-acre landscape (that’s 10 times larger). We also collaborated on a science study to quantify how forest treatments would increase water yield and could be leveraged to improve ecological flows for foothill yellow-legged frogs below French Meadows dam.

Initiated in 2019, this 275,000-acre project will be the largest forest restoration of its kind in the Sierra. Using the partnership model we honed at French Meadows, we are working with nine partners to restore one of the most critical watersheds in the region. TNC scientists are leading a multi-party monitoring effort to quantify the impacts of forest treatments on habitat for California spotted owl and large trees.

Thanks to the scientific credibility and strong partnerships we built up through our work in the Sierra, TNC was invited to work with the U.S. Forest Service to lead the science effort that will guide restoration across the 2.4 million-acre band of forest surrounding Lake Tahoe. The Framework for Resilience developed by the science team was adopted by the state Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force to frame forest restoration efforts across the state. The team also developed a novel way to incorporate climate change projections to inform where to invest in forest treatments to improve resilience.

In 2025, TNC and our partners Sierra Business Council and the Northern Sierra Partnership formed the Wildfire Solutions Coalition, a new statewide coalition that’s organizing a broad base of public support to increase public investment in wildfire resilience. The coalition’s initial focus is to ensure that nature-based climate solutions, including forest and wildfire resilience projects, receive a significant proportion of cap-and-invest revenues during the program’s reauthorization in 2025-2026.

In 2018, the small town of Paradise, California, made international news when the Camp Fire killed 86 people, burned 95% of the town’s structures to the ground and caused $16.5 billion in damages. The tragedy was of extraordinary proportions.

During the fire, residents who were unable to leave evacuated to a community park, which provided protection from the flames. As part of their rebuilding process, the town approached TNC to explore how open space could help the community become more resilient as they redevelop while also providing other benefits like habitat and recreational opportunities.

TNC launched two partnerships to develop and test new approaches to (re)development that combine internal and external expertise in fire and ecological science, conservation planning and economic modeling. Our 2022 report, Learning to Live with Fire in Forest Communities, highlights the science and benefits of fire-resilient community design.

In 2025, devastating wildfires ravaged the greater Los Angeles area. These were human-ignited fires that started in chaparral, not forests, and they burned across landscapes dominated by shrubs and houses rather than through a forest dominated by trees. Under current extreme drought and wind conditions, chaparral fires can result in explosive events that threaten our lives and communities.

Recognizing the urgency of this threat, TNC is working with partners to highlight tailored approaches to building community resilience to wildfire that support chaparral ecosystems and harness our ability to plan communities so they are less vulnerable to chaparral fire.

TNC is leveraging our science to identify priority wildlife corridors and advance wildlife crossing projects, including over and under Interstate-15 in Riverside County, to allow wildlife to safely move. We’re also creating networks for nature by connecting habitats to help California wildlife survive the climate crisis.

A quarter century after the original Missing Linkages symposium that brought habitat connectivity to the forefront of conservation thinking in the state, TNC and partners are convening another landmark event. This symposium is part of our efforts to create a vision for a system of connected landscapes and wildlife corridors throughout California and working in coalitions to advance policies, create funding streams and drive implementation to make the vision a reality.

We’re working to promote climate-smart housing in existing communities and disincentivizing housing in places that fragment key habitat, put people in harm’s way and contribute to urban sprawl.

We’re motivating organizations and governments to create Greenprints in their communities or regions. Greenprints reveal the range of benefits provided by nature in community planning, to inspire decision makers and communities to advance nature-based solutions for vibrant and resilient communities.

We’re developing frameworks that integrate conservation and infrastructure planning to both maximize the benefits of conserving nature and also reduce costs and risks to infrastructure projects.

In 2019, TNC published a first-of-its-kind study for California, Power of Place, a report that integrates sophisticated energy modeling with conservation data to demonstrate how California can achieve its clean energy goals while limiting harm to vulnerable ecosystems and factoring in cost and electricity reliability. Since then, TNC has replicated the methodology to show how we can decarbonize in ways that minimize impacts to nature across the entire western United States and nationwide. TNC also led an analysis to identify transmission investments needed to enable low-impact solar development in the San Joaquin Valley, a critical area for advancing the Power of Place—West’s vision.

The Mojave Desert plays a leading role in California’s ambitious renewable energy goals. Wind and solar energy installations are becoming an increasingly common sight in the desert. While those projects make important contributions to California’s climate change objectives, they need to be pursued in places and ways that will allow California’s natural habitats to continue thriving.

TNC’s Development by Design approach brings together everyone who depends on the region’s resources in order to ensure a permanent and amicable solution to the desert’s environmental and energy needs. By using TNC’s extensive scientific knowledge of the region, we can take a “Smart from the Start” approach to guide the development process and inform mitigation strategies to ensure that the Mojave Desert remains one of the most wild and least human-modified landscapes in North America.

Rechargeable batteries made from lithium are a key part of society’s plan to decarbonize. TNC recently led and published the first study to evaluate the potential impacts to biodiversity and conservation from proposed lithium extraction sites in the continental United States. With specific information about how proposed extraction projects could potentially impact specially designated lands, habitat and wildlife—and approaches to minimize these impacts—policymakers and community leaders have new information to navigate this growing challenge.

TNC’s Green Light Study showed that clean and green energy projects in California were permitted 2.5 times faster than clean energy projects proposed on ecologically important land. Through proactive planning that incorporates land and conservation data into energy decisions, California can significantly ramp up renewables and minimize delays while also limiting negative impacts to the natural and working lands.

Over the last decade, TNC has been an active supporter of California’s SB 100 with a goal to achieve 100% renewable and zero carbon energy by 2045. California is currently updating the roadmap to achieve this vision, and TNC is bringing our science to these discussions to show how we can achieve multiple goals together, including protecting nature and maximizing energy reliability and affordability.