It’s looking like San Francisco Bay Area conservationists could pull off protecting half the region’s land by 2050, according to a new analysis of public data.

“If we continue this pace, we’ll be able to achieve 50×50,” said Amanda Kochanek, speaking last week at a conference for TOGETHER Bay Area (TBA), a nonprofit coalition of local conservation groups and allies. She’s the spatial data automation manager at Greeninfo Network, which produced the analysis and manages the underlying data. “I think that’s pretty exciting.”

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Each shade of green shows a decade’s worth of progress toward the 50×50 goal. This chart was produced using the Bay Area Protected Areas Database. Greeninfo Network

This progress puts the region way ahead of much of the rest of the world, for which the goal was set in 2022 at 30×30—protecting 30 percent of the world’s lands by 2030. California committed to 30×30 in 2020, ahead of a Biden executive order doing the same for the nation, and is most of the way toward its goal, with 26 percent of lands and 22 percent of waters protected. But President Donald J. Trump formally canceled the United States’ commitment to 30×30 on the first day of his second term in office, and global progress has been uneven, with a 2024 report finding just 17 percent of the land and 8 percent of the water protected. This year at COP17, the U.N. biodiversity conference, stock will be taken—and some backtracking on goals is expected, according to Brian O’Donnell, director of the Campaign for Nature, which advocates for 30×30 globally.

“You are at the front lines,” O’Donnell told the conference participants. He said the Bay Area would be held up as an example at COP17. “You’re showcasing that conservation can be done in a manner that’s inclusive, that centers Indigenous perspectives—and showing it can be done in places where other activities are taking place.”

Locally, about 200,000 acres have been conserved per decade, or about 20,000 acres per year, Kochanek says. Meaning that to stay on track, the region must each year protect about as much land as Big Basin Redwoods State park or Mount Diablo State Park.

“There’s a story behind each and every property. There are the wins, the losses, there are the struggles,” Kochanek says. “And it’s not over.”

Last month, a key patch of land was finally protected that exemplifies how long and complicated that story can be. The nonprofit Save Mount Diablo conveyed 160 acres of Curry Canyon Ranch, plus a contiguous 155-acre perpetual conservation easement, to the East Contra Costa County Conservancy, in exchange for $2.15 million of state and federal funding via a Wildlife Conservation Board grant. The deal was 13 years in the making, and made possible through many partnerships and much wrangling of funding. 

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The purchase was also facilitated by Contra Costa County’s voter-approved urban limit line, which protects open space beyond a defined boundary—and thus ensures that conservationists are the primary potential buyers for such lands. (Contra Costa County voters will decide in June on Measure A, which would renew the urban limit line policy.)

“It’s not yet on the [30×30] map!” Abigail Fateman, executive director of the conservancy, said. “In itself, 325 acres—that’s not a huge amount of land. But it is an important puzzle piece,” she said. “We’re just building upon each other.”

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Curry Canyon Ranch is surrounded on three sides by Mount Diablo State Park; 325 acres of the ranch were recently protected via a fee title transfer. Save Mount Diablo

A map of the area makes this puzzle-piece-ness immediately clear. The 1,080-acre ranch is surrounded on three sides by Mount Diablo State Park, and some of it is intended to eventually become part of the state park. Some 30 special-status species live on the ranchlands, according to Save Mount Diablo. The 205-mile-long Diablo Range is largely unprotected.

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The rolling oak hills are home to around 30 different protected species, according to analysis by Save Mount Diablo. Kate Golden / Bay Nature

On a tour of the ranch last Friday, tiny hot-pink clarkias—the last vestiges of spring—poked up festively amid the already golden grasses. Blue and live oaks had plenty of room to stretch out. Buckeyes bloomed in white and pink. A golden eagle perched on its nest, wingtips just visible from below. A Bullock’s oriole paused on a fence. California red-legged frogs lurked in a nearby pond. They’re all protected now.

“It gives me hope that every little bit matters,” Fateman said.

Kate Golden is Bay Nature's senior editor. Her background is in investigative, data-driven, and science journalism, and she has reported from rural Australia to the Bering Sea. She is also an artist, cyclist and sailor. Send tips to kate at baynature.org, or find her on Instagram at @meownderthal.