Frequently asked questions

Answered by a team member at Sempervirens Fund

• What is your mission?

  Sempervirens Fund’s mission is to protect and permanently preserve redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forests, wildlife habitat, watersheds, and other important natural and scenic features of California’s Santa Cruz Mountains, and to encourage public appreciation and enjoyment of this environment.

• How are donations used?

  The habitats, waterways, and resiliency of the Santa Cruz Mountain region are at risk without healthy, connected coast redwood forests. Our tools: conservation and restoration, forged by foresight. Acre by protected acre, and with your support, we purchase, restore, and safeguard redwood forests in the Santa Cruz Mountains, ensuring they will never be developed, degraded, or destroyed.

  Protecting the remaining old-growth redwoods and second-growth redwood forests relies on your support, cutting-edge science, and robust and dynamic partnerships with public agencies and landowners, to ensure public parks and protected forests are unified into a resilient, protected, and thoughtfully-managed system.

• What progress has been made already thanks to your donors?

  Thanks to you, Sempervirens Fund protects redwood forests in the Santa Cruz Mountains, preserves the plants and animals that make them home, and restores the balance of nature.

• What is the history of your organization?

  In 1900, Sempervirens Fund led the way to permanently protect six square miles of old-growth redwoods which are now the heart of Big Basin Redwoods State Park. Since our founding, we've protected more than 35,000 critical acres of Santa Cruz Mountain redwoods with the support of our donors and partners.

  Sempervirens Fund is pioneering a new model of weaving together public parks, private land, and sustainably managed forests into a beautiful, healthy redwood ecosystem, while we also create new ways for people to enjoy and explore our region’s treasured trees. We move forward, knowing that we follow in the footsteps of generations of earnest, passionate, and determined citizens working to protect coast redwoods, always.

  This is our story.