by Suzanne GillCommunications and Outreach Coordinator While the monarch butterfly is among the most beloved wildlife species in the U.S., populations of both the Eastern and Western monarch have declined precipitously since the late 1990s. By 2019, the Western monarch population was estimated to have plummeted to just two percent of the total recorded 22 years earlier, in 1997. The […]
October 24, 2023 by Emma Levy, Conservation Ecologist Mule deer find a very welcoming environment on the Santa Lucia Preserve. Discriminating foragers, they seek the most nutritious parts of a variety of plants (including berries and acorns), rather than large quantities of low-quality grasses and leaves. The Preserve’s large variety of vegetation in different habitat areas, combined with its limited human […]
July 10, 2023 By Andrew Evans, Conservation Grazing Associate This spring and summer, we’ve been seeing an abundance of diverse native wildflowers blanketing our grassy hillsides, poking up out of rocky outcrops, and brightening our lowland meadows. After a wet winter, the seeds of drought-adapted plants that have laid dormant in the soil are springing to life once again. When […]