'Tis The Season of Giving
Over this past year, I have introduced a handful of non-profits to my readers that supports our environment. If you are looking for organizations to support this season, look into a few of my favorites.
The National Audubon Society's "mission is to protect birds and the places they need, today and tomorrow. [They] conserve and restore natural ecosystems, focusing on birds and their habitats, for the benefit of humanity and the earth's biological diversity."
The Xerces Society "protects the natural world through the conservation of invertebrates and their habitats." They focus on "pollinator conservation, endangered species conservation, and reducing pesticide use and impacts." Since the Xerces Society is a science based organization all their conservation is guided by research leading to more thoughtful and overall successful conservation projects.
California Native Plant Society
CNPS works to protect native plants by working on conservation, education, and plant science. The CNPS conservation efforts includes advocating "for maximum legal protection and science-based, ecologically sound land-management." This is an important step in protecting the ecosystems that these plant reside in as well as protecting the animals that depend on these native plants for their survival.
“The Nature Conservancy is a global environmental nonprofit working to create a world where people and nature can thrive.” Their mission is to “conserve lands and waters on which all life depends.” The nature conservancy was founded in 1951 and now “impacts conservation in 72 countries and territories.”
Bee City USA is a nonprofit organization focusing on protecting bees. With over 3,600 bees native to the United States and with their numbers declining, it is important to protect these vital pollinators. "Bee City USA provides a framework for communities to come together to conserve native pollinators by providing them with healthy habitat that is rich in variety of native plants, provides nest sites, and is protected from pesticides."
Monarch Watch is a nonprofit education, conservation, and research program based at the University of Kansas that focuses on the monarch butterfly, its habitat, and its spectacular fall migration. "Every fall, hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies migrate from the United States and Canada to mountains in central Mexico where they wait out the winter until conditions favor a return flight in the spring. The monarch migration is truly one of the world's greatest natural wonders yet it is threatened by habitat loss at overwintering grounds in Mexico and throughout breeding areas in the United States and Canada."
Cal-IPC stands for California Invasive Plant Council and it is focused on "protecting California's environment and economy from invasive plants". Cal-IPC has been around since 1992 and since its inception, it has done a wide range of work to "protect native (and often threatened or endangered) species by managing invasive plants in California."