Wildlife Heritage Foundation 2024 Annual Conservation Easement Monitoring

Wildlife Heritage Foundation’s obligation of stewarding wild and working lands across nearly 200 California easement preserves takes us to some pretty rugged and breathtaking places! Perhaps no more so than our approximately 100 conservation easement parcels encompassing over 13,000-acres in the Colorado Desert.

It was all hands-on deck this past month, as WHF’s stewardship team ventured into the desert for our annual conservation easement monitoring. A perfectly timed trip greeted our team with mild 80°F weather and splendid wildflower blooms including desert lily (Hesperocallis undulata) and desert globemallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua). Wildlife were abundant, sightings of phainopepla (Phainopepla nitens), Gambel’s quail (Callipepla gambelii), and southern desert horned lizard (Phrynosoma platyrhinos calidiarum) thrilled our staff, while a close encounter with a Western diamondback rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox) had us scrambling for our cameras, being sure to show full respect for personal space!

Rough roads and steep hills only added to our esteem for the tough plants and wildlife that thrive in the desert, while the beautiful sunsets, a backdrop to the rock laden landscape, only confirmed the importance of maintaining these lands in a natural state. Our staff looks forward to returning to this breathtaking terrain in the fall to complete our monitoring and continue our task of protecting wildlife habitat while maintaining awe inspiring vistas.