Conservation and rare plants go hand in hand, and that includes locally rare plants as well as those that are rare throughout the state. Without protection, species with few populations, narrow geographic ranges, or other vulnerabilities are at risk of extinction. CNPS East Bay Chapter members and others who care about native plants can play an important role by advocating for native plant protection with the biggest manager of wildlands in our two-county area, the East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD).
Importance of locally rare plants
When CNPS was still a very young organization in the 1970s, our local chapter began to monitor and track the state’s rare plants occurring in our area. But by the early 1990s we had come to realize that many additional native plants in our East Bay chapter area were rare locally but not necessarily in the rest of the state, and these plants also needed monitoring and protection.
The plants of our unique East Bay ecosystem have evolved over many millennia, and each piece of the ecosystem plays an important role in maintaining the health of the whole. There is a delicate balance in every ecosystem, and every time we remove a part of it—be it a plant, animal, insect, or other component—it affects that balance. We know the important role that plants play by not only providing oxygen for the air we breathe, but also cleansing our water, soil, and air.
Too many of our local native plants have already been removed as over-development, weed invasions, pathogens, and other detrimental factors have spread. Many of our remaining native plants have only one or two populations left in the East Bay, many others reach their range limits here, and several occur only in limited and threatened habitats. We must work to preserve what we have left.
Protecting locally rare plants
Over the years, many of our agencies and lawmakers have come to realize the importance of preserving the state’s rare plants, and in 1970 the state enacted the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Land planners and managers are now required by law to consider statewide rare plants in their projects and management decisions.
But for locally rare plants, it is still an uphill battle. They are often ignored, even though CEQA sections 15125(c) and 15380 require that locally rare plants be considered in project planning.
For many years, our chapter’s Conservation Committee volunteers have been speaking up for locally rare plants, working to get these sensitive species recognized and considered in projects and land management decisions around the East Bay and especially on EBRPD lands, where so many of these populations occur. Dianne Lake, our Unusual Plants Committee Chair, has been tracking these locally rare plants since the early 1990s with the help of a large cadre of dedicated field volunteers, and she provides the Conservation Committee with the most current information to support their advocacy work. (“Unusual plants” is another name for locally rare plants.)
In 2023 our CNPS East Bay Chapter sent a request to EBRPD asking them to include 30 specific locally rare plants and sensitive plant communities (rare or vulnerable in the East Bay) in their plans for Measure FF funds approved by voters in 2018 and designated for conservation work in the parks. A few of the locally rare plants included in our request for park restoration and conservation projects are leopard lily (Lilium pardalinum ssp. pardalinum) at Anthony Chabot Regional Park, purple milkweed (Asclepias cordifolia) at Carquinez Strait Regional Shoreline, and Bolander’s onion (Allium bolanderi) at Sunol Wilderness Regional Preserve. Some of the sensitive plant communities included in our request are native grasslands at several parks, chaparral at Huckleberry and Sobrante Ridge botanic regional preserves, and vernal pools at Deer Valley Regional Park.
Last spring three members of our chapter board met with EBRPD Stewardship Department staff members for a progress report on management and protection of those 30 plants and communities, and to make a specific request for 10 of the locally rare species on the list. We knew they had already begun working on some of our requests, and we were pleased to hear about their progress. Even better, they were enthusiastic about our 10 specific requests, which included protection for long-leaf paintbrush (Castilleja subinclusa ssp. franciscana) at Miller/Knox Regional Shoreline and leather fern (Polypodium scouleri) at Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park.
Some of the projects EBRPD has been working on are:
- A recently completed three-year project to map all of the known statewide rare plant populations on EBRPD lands, including parks and land banks.
- A project to map the locally rare plants on EBRPD lands, beginning in 2026. Our chapter will be working closely with EBRPD staff, and we have already provided them with lists of locally rare plants that are known from only one or two current East Bay populations on EBRPD land.
- A recently completed native grassland mapping project. Native grasslands, large or small, usually have high native plant diversity, and rare plants can often be found in these habitats as well. Knowing where grassland areas of high native diversity occur helps determine where to prioritize both rare plant surveys and weed abatement programs while also providing important data for other management and planning decisions.
- Protection of locally rare plant populations. EBRPD’s Stewardship Department is already aware of many of our locally rare plant populations and is enthusiastic about pursuing protection for them. They have created programs to protect some of our locally rare plants such as salal (Gautheria shallon) at Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park and several species at Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve and Ohlone Wilderness Regional Preserve.
in the East Bay. Photo by Cable Bay Trail (CC BY-NC 2.0).
How you can help
The Stewardship Department is making good progress, but the department needs a larger staff. The lands owned and managed by EBRPD have almost doubled in recent years, but stewardship staffing has not. With additional stewardship staff and field crews, EBRPD could more effectively monitor and care for threatened plant populations and prevent invasive weeds from taking over.
CNPS–East Bay members and others who care about native plants can play an important role by contacting members of the EBRPD Board of Directors and upper management staff to advocate for increasing the number of botanical and stewardship staff members as well as providing greater protection for both our statewide and locally rare plants and sensitive plant communities.
We also have an opportunity to advocate for native plants by providing input into EBRPD’s District Plan, its strategic roadmap and outline of priorities for the next 50 years. We need to make sure that native plants and sensitive plant communities have prominent places in that plan. Locally rare plants must be included along with statewide rare plants and sensitive plant communities, and their importance must be recognized and addressed.
Many of you filled out the District Plan survey EBRPD distributed earlier this year requesting input about what people want in their parks and what is important to them. But the survey is only the beginning of our work.
The park district will be holding follow-up meetings on the District Plan in the coming months. Your voices and personal emails will be important before and during these meetings. Talk to your friends and neighbors and make sure they too understand why it is so important to protect our native plants and why their input is needed. Remind them that plants, animals, insects, and people are all part of the same ecosystem. We are interdependent. Our lives depend on plants, and the lives of future generations depend on plants.
To learn more about the District Plan, the schedule of public meetings, and whom to contact with your concerns, sign up for District Plan notices from EBRPD. Also keep an eye out for CNPS East Bay Chapter alerts in the Bay Leaf newsletter and on social media, and reach out to our Conservation Committee Chair, Jim Hanson, at conservation@ebcnps.org.
Please help in any way you can to protect the native plants we have left. All of our natural resources, and especially our native plants, need your help. Thank you.
—Dianne Lake, Unusual Plants Committee Chair, and Kristen Hopper, Rare Plants Committee, CNPS East Bay Chapter
November 2025
