… If California can sustain its early progress, there’s good reason for optimism that the 30×30 goal is attainable. Just in the past year, California added about 861,000 acres of grasslands, deserts, freshwater areas and other habitats. It added 631,000 acres the year before. The biggest gains came through enhanced protections for about 120,000 acres of federal lands in the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument and the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument. Almost 40,000 acres were also added through the state’s first-ever ancestral land return, funded through a $100 million grant to return land to Indigenous communities, including acreage belonging to the Hoopa Valley Tribe in the Klamath River watershed. Additional efforts are underway to add lands in Coachella Valley and near Joshua Tree National Park.

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