![\"chart\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/50x50_progress_chart_05142026a.png\")
Each shade of green shows a decade\u2019s worth of progress toward the 50\u00d750 goal. This chart was produced using the Bay Area Protected Areas Database. Greeninfo Network<\/p>\nIt\u2019s looking like San Francisco Bay Area conservationists could pull off protecting half the region\u2019s land by 2050, according to a new analysis of public data.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we continue this pace, we\u2019ll be able to achieve 50\u00d750,\u201d said Amanda Kochanek, speaking last week at a conference for TOGETHER Bay Area (TBA), a nonprofit coalition of local conservation groups and allies. She\u2019s the spatial data automation manager at Greeninfo Network, which produced the analysis and manages the underlying data. \u201cI think that\u2019s pretty exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each shade of green shows a decade\u2019s worth of progress toward the 50\u00d750 goal. This chart was produced using the Bay Area Protected Areas Database. Greeninfo Network<\/p>\n
This progress puts the region way ahead of much of the rest of the world, for which the goal was set in 2022 at 30\u00d730\u2014protecting 30 percent of the world\u2019s lands by 2030. California committed to 30\u00d730 in 2020, ahead of a Biden executive order doing the same for the nation, and is most of the way toward its goal, with 26 percent of lands and 22 percent of waters protected. But President Donald J. Trump formally canceled the United States\u2019 commitment to 30\u00d730 on the first day of his second term in office, and global progress has been uneven, with a 2024 report finding just 17 percent of the land and 8 percent of the water protected. This year at COP17, the U.N. biodiversity conference, stock will be taken\u2014and some backtracking on goals is expected, according to Brian O\u2019Donnell, director of the Campaign for Nature, which advocates for 30\u00d730 globally.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are at the front lines,\u201d O\u2019Donnell told the conference participants. He said the Bay Area would be held up as an example at COP17. \u201cYou\u2019re showcasing that conservation can be done in a manner that\u2019s inclusive, that centers Indigenous perspectives\u2014and showing it can be done in places where other activities are taking place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Locally, about 200,000 acres have been conserved per decade, or about 20,000 acres per year, Kochanek says. Meaning that to stay on track, the region must each year protect about as much land as Big Basin Redwoods State park or Mount Diablo State Park.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a story behind each and every property. There are the wins, the losses, there are the struggles,\u201d Kochanek says. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not over.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last month, a key patch of land was finally protected that exemplifies how long and complicated that story can be. The nonprofit Save Mount Diablo conveyed 160 acres of Curry Canyon Ranch, plus a contiguous 155-acre perpetual conservation easement, to the East Contra Costa County Conservancy, in exchange for $2.15 million of state and federal funding via a Wildlife Conservation Board grant. The deal<\/a> was 13 years in the making, and made possible through many partnerships and much wrangling of funding.\u00a0<\/p>\n Get Bay Nature\u2019s Free Weekly Newsletter<\/p>\n
![\"map\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Curry-Canyon-Ranch-map_Save-Mount-Diablo_50x50.jpg\")
Curry Canyon Ranch is surrounded on three sides by Mount Diablo State Park; 325 acres of the ranch were recently protected via a fee title transfer. Save Mount Diablo<\/p>\n![\"hill\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Curry-Canyon_Golden_1.jpeg\")
The rolling oak hills are home to around 30 different protected species, according to analysis by Save Mount Diablo. Kate Golden \/ Bay Nature<\/p>\n