Our Work

At Northern California Regional Land Trust, we come to our work, including to Tribal Engagement,

As individuals,

As a community-led, mission-driven, nonprofit public benefit organization since 1990,

Serving all community members across the geography roughly known by Tehama, Butte, and Glenn Counties, and Plumas along the North Fork, and Shasta, along Battle Creek.

As co-stewards with private citizens and limited liability corporations, of 41,245 acres.

We want to better understand. To hear.

As we listen, we are noting ideas and connections, on-ramps to alignment and intersection with private lands’ conservation and prospective acquisitions and outreach opportunities.

We wish to be in relationship with, to remain in alignment with

The indigenous-led restoration of right relations.

Our programs connect privately-held properties with durable protections to applied nature-based solutions, decolonizing land access, protecting open space, and foster learning environments beyond the classroom or campus. Through stewardship which invites ongoing cultural practices and discovery/documentation by citizen scientists and scientist citizens together, the NCRLT fosters a network which co-creates how to heal prior ecological disruptions which impact the land and water communities, maintain cultural access to traditional spaces and practices, while building an understanding of needs which extend beyond access. Once defined within this community fabric, the NCRLT can identify and propose projects to meet needs which are reasonable and mission-aligned, and strategize the policy and funding resources which will assist in developing our work.

Land is complicated. When threats and changes, or perceived changes, in status of ownership transpire within a community, NCRLT’s neutrality can promote dialogue between entities lacking natural connection, about lands which do not currently have a clear use designation, current or future, and also include approved development holdings, during mitigation, post-construction monitoring and stewardship program management.

What we Need

In this space, we need context, would be grateful for the opportunity to learn, in reference to our organization, any past history or actions/in-actions/false starts we should know.

People and Places

BOD: six total, Noelle Ferdon-Brimlow is chair

Founders: Jim Saake and Joe King

Staff: Hannah, Cynthia, Ben, Kim, Silas, and Mariana

Conservation Easements: 16,000 forested and 21,000 agricultural

Fee Title: Deer Creek Preserve, Tehama County 600 acres, Deer Creek Trail access

Nearly all former staff, and all founders, live in or near Chico. Founders are monthly and annual contributors to the NCRLT goals through financial donations. In the context of tribal engagement, as parks and preserves foundation, an early mission included indigenous access, and was discussed for several projects’ early stages of the volunteer nonprofit.

The NCRLT team is led by our volunteer Board of Directors members and staff Executive Director, whose connections to Chico and Butte County extend well into the prior century. The University is a major driver of their choosing Chico as a base of operations, for education themselves, or to serve as University educators or program staff at the University or State government for recreation and natural resources management.

The lands in NCRLT’s service region, specifically conserving it and co-stewarding it, directly brought two key staff who work in acquisitions, our longest-serving NCRLT staff, Hannah Espinosa, started as Stewardship Coordinator in 2022, and now directs both Stewardship and Conservation. Since October 2025, she has undergone medical treatment reducing her work time, and constricts our ability for new projects to some degree. In response, through structured professional development of more recently hired staff, Ben is taking on a steep learning curve for acquisitions and project management to fill this gap, while Kim navigates managing the NCRLT’s Stewardship Program with Hannah’s oversight, both supported by Watershed Assistant, Silas. In addition to Strategic Conservation Planning and Partnerships, Cynthia focuses on Administrative Programs such as re-accreditation, Business, and Operations Planning with a new-to-the-NCRLT full-charge bookkeeper and transactions manager, Mariana.

This, our team, is the Northern California Regional Land Trust, along with our landowners whom we co-steward through both formal and informal conservation management agreements, prospective landowners with whom we are developing projects to consider for restoration or acquisition, and our Board of Directors, whom we solicit through open invitation. We anticipate expanding organizational capacity within this team first before hiring additional staff.