Biodiversity
The guarantee of life on Earth.
Guide to the Page
To protect the precious environmental resources we have in Southern California, we need to plan for species other than ourselves.
Biodiversity and Conservation Dashboard
Southern California is one of the most biodiverse places on earth and the most biodiverse place in the United States. Our special responsibility to places and species can be realized through conservation, healthy waters and habitats, and plenty of interconnection in actions as simple as planting native plants at home to advocating for broader land protections.
Click through the tabs, zoom in and out, and click on statistics in each map. The last tab allows users to turn data layers on and off. We have over 65 data layers related to biodiversity and conservation clipped to Southern California available on our open data portal.
How much land is conserved in your city?
The two global movements, 30x30 and The Half-Earth Project, aim to conserve open and working lands and coastal waters: 30% by 2030, and half the earth, respectively (see the StoryMaps and their websites below).
Conservation means that the land will be permanently kept as open space, cooling things down, filtering water, nurturing pollinators and microbial life, supporting biodiversity, storing and exchanging carbon, regenerating soil, growing food, and contributing to ecosystem and human health and wellbeing
Use our 30x30 App to see how much land is conserved open space in your area. Some of the results may surprise you!
The data show that we have a lot of land conserved in Southern California but that that many of our urbanized areas lack open space for humans and other species to thrive.
StoryMaps: Changing the Future through Conservation
30x30, From The Nature Conservancy: "The dual crises of climate change and mass wildlife extinctions threaten to forever change our world, but there is hope. By protecting 30% of the planet’s oceans, lands, and freshwaters by 2030, people and nature can thrive together into the future."
The Half-Earth Project, From The E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation. "In 2016, E.O. Wilson wrote a book called Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life. In that book was a promise: if we protect half the Earth’s land and sea and manage sufficient habitat to safeguard the bulk of biodiversity, living Earth can continue to breathe."
Browse the Half-Earth Project Map!
Center for Biological Diversity Map: U.S. Threatened and Endangered Species by County
Center for Biological Diversity is one of the premier defenders of multiple species in the United States. They have compiled a list of US endangered species in by County. Several groups in California track species of all statuses, but for endangered species, groups tend not to disclose specific locations in order to protect them.
From CBD's website:
For every county in the United States, the map below shows information on all the animals and plants protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act as threatened or endangered.
How to Use It:
To see the number of federally protected species in a given county, zoom in on the map until the county boundaries appear and click on a point within the county; then click the arrow on the right in the popup window to go to a table. From there, to see a list of all the species in that county, click on the arrow to the right on the "Species List" line. From there, you can see information about each species by clicking the arrow on the line with its name.
Toward a Multi-Species Southern California
Short ecodocumentaries produced through a course collaboration between Intercollegiate Media Studies at the Claremont Colleges and the Robert Redford Conservancy at Pitzer College.