Featured Stories

In early 2018, a multi-year collaboration between California Department of Transportation District 5, the Elkhorn Slough Foundation, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers culminated in the preservation of 167 acres of wildland in the Elkhorn Highlands of Monterey County, California. Now recognized as the Elkhorn Highlands Reserve, this mitigation land transfer marked a first-of-its-kind partnership between a California state agency and a local non-profit organization.

How do you meet the needs of a rapidly growing human population and the surrounding habitat at the same time? Look to Williamson County in Texas as an example.

Recently, Williamson County in Texas celebrated 10 years of its Regional Habitat Conservation Plan (RHCP). SWCA spent several years working with the County, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and other organizations to create the RHCP, which sought to facilitate development in one of the fastest growing regions in the U.S., while protecting threatened and endangered species.

The Animas–La Plata Project (ALP) is located in La Plata and Montezuma Counties in southwestern Colorado and in San Juan County in northwestern New Mexico. Often called the “last big water project in the West,” Animas–La Plata is celebrating several milestones this year.

This May marks 10 years since the completed Lake Nighthorse reservoir near Durango began filling. To get to that point, the project survived decades of planning, collaboration, public interest, plus financial and regulatory roadblocks.