2024
- CSERC partnered with three other local environmental groups to oppose the logging of large trees (up to 40” in diameter) as was proposed in the giant SERAL 2.0 forest treatment project of more than 100,000 acres in the Stanislaus Forest. That opposition led to a USFS decision to withdraw the plan to log the large trees.
- CSERC staff participated in a major stakeholder celebration in Yosemite National Park to applaud the completion of the first phase of tens of millions of dollars’ worth of meadow restoration treatments across iconic Ackerson Meadow. More than a decade ago, CSERC first raised the need with the Park Service to do restoration to rehabilitate the eroded, gullied meadow area. CSERC staff and volunteers are participating in various workdays to help implement the restoration treatments.
- Over four months during the winter and early spring, CSERC photo-detection cameras successfully photographed rare fishers in remote areas of the national forest. The fisher is an at-risk, listed species, and our months of field surveys maintaining the cameras helped to provide valuable information for USFS and Park Service biologists.
- With various presentations both in person or by Zoom for online audiences, CSERC has amazingly now reached more than 156,000 participants with talks, slide show presentations, or field tours. Since 1990 our staff has given more than 3,000 separate presentations or talks about water, wildlife, and forests to educate and inform students or members of community groups.
- Our Center’s on-the-ground watchdog monitoring in the local forest has continued to discover concerns such as illegal activities, roads with resource issues, the spread of invasive noxious weeds, and other important issues. All such discoveries are shared with the USFS, which admittedly lacks the capacity to do such field monitoring.
2020–2023
- Collaborated with Yosemite Stanislaus Solutions partners to help create a giant "large landscape" forest treatments project called the SERAL project. When the project gained final approval in 2022, CSERC aided YSS by doing initial monitoring of treatments and helped gain media coverage of this precedent-setting giant forest project.
- CSERC continued to be the only NGO organization participating in the hydroelectric relicensing plan for the South Fork Stanislaus River – a plan that will end up setting river management direction for the next 40 years.
- The Phoenix Lake restoration project – that CSERC helped launch plans for 15 years ago – finally implemented the first phase of lake restoration treatments and dredging at the Lake.
- CSERC partnered with local concerned citizens to appeal two major leap-frog development projects proposed a few miles outside of Yosemite Park. CSERC filed legal challenges to the projects when appeals were denied by Tuolumne County and has helped negotiate win-win settlement agreements.
- Staff frequently visited Yosemite Park to monitor conditions and to assess crowding and congestion.
- We managed to increase CSERC's website traffic to roughly 1/3 of a million hits per year, with the vast majority coming from youth doing educational nature games.
- Participated in 150-200 meetings annually to serve as a key voice for nature in the region.
2015–2019
- CSERC staff advocated for the environment by participating in 4 collaborative stakeholder processes affecting water resources or forests across our vast region.
- We organized monthly activist working group sessions to raise awareness and involvement in local conservation issues.
- By the end of 2019, CSERC had reached over 154,000 students and members of community groups with inspiring environmental programs.
- CSERC raised awareness and enthusiasm of our local region through 7 years of photo contests, including a category for youth to encourage students to engage with their environment.
- Over the five years of summer/fall field seasons from 2015-2019, CSERC biologists tested water quality in forest streams as part of scientific studies that have highlighted the health risk of water pollution by livestock.
- In every year, CSERC staff monitored livestock impacts by performing bi-annual monitoring of at least 40 mountain meadows in the local national forest.
- Due to the U.S. Forest Service failing to correct violations proven year after year by CSERC’s field monitoring and water quality sampling of streams, CSERC filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service over its persistent failure to prevent livestock from damaging meadow resources and polluting water. (The litigation is still ongoing.)
2011–2014
- CSERC played a key role in negotiating a balanced “Rim Fire salvage logging” plan that spared sensitive sites from disturbance and reduced the Forest Service’s proposed logging by 2/3.
- We located rare wildlife to gain extra protection for the places where they survive in Yosemite and the Stanislaus Forest.
- We received a national award from the U.S. Forest Service Volunteers & Service Annual Awards Program for the volunteer stewardship work CSERC volunteers completed in 2014.
2000–2010
- In a 7-year-long federal hydroelectric relicensing process, CSERC helped win huge gains for river flows, wildlife, and recreation in the Stanislaus River system.
- CSERC greatly influenced plans for massive aerial applications of chemical herbicides on public forest lands, mitigating the detrimental effects of spraying.
1990s
- CSERC saved over 8,000 acres of old growth habitat from being clearcut within the Stanislaus National Forest.
- We helped stop the construction of expensive and destructive roads which would have required bulldozing wild, roadless areas in the local national forest.