Celebrate with us: September 6th – 14th, 2025
September 7th is California Biodiversity Day – Check out the California Biodiversity Day website to learn more and join in!
Take Action
There are infinite ways in which people can promote biodiversity in their neighborhoods through small everyday actions. Here are some tips!
- Take small actions to stop the spread of invasive species. Landscape with native plants, properly clean and dry watercraft when recreating in bodies of water, and do not release pets into the wild. If you’re going camping, buy firewood at your destination to help reduce the spread of harmful insects and fungi. Biodiversity decline in California is driven in large part by invasive species and pests spread by humans. Learn more here.
- Discover the native plants in your area by searching Calscape, California’s hub for California native plants and native plant gardening, created by the California Native Plant Society (CNPS).
- Keep feline friends indoors. This is for your cat’s own health and safety. Outdoor cats also spread diseases and are a major threat to biodiversity, driving the disappearance of birds and small mammals everywhere they are left free to roam. Read more about what you can do to help biodiversity, here.
- Participate in local stewardship activities aimed to restore the land and wildlife around you.
- Learn about Indigenous stewardship practices from the Inter-Tribal Council of California and the Tribal Marine Stewards Network.
- Create habitat in your yard or neighborhood for everything from healthy soil microbes to bees and butterflies to birds! How? Avoid excessive pruning and mowing in the spring, leave leaves on the ground in the fall, retain tree snags and other deadwood where safe, and garden with native plants.
- Reduce wildlife collisions around your home. Bright lights attract and confuse wildlife at night: Consider swapping out your bulbs for yellow-toned lights and/or motion sensors. Birds collide with clear clean windows: Apply small decals to large windows in your home or business. Both of these actions are highly effective at preventing wildlife deaths around your home!
- Continue to discover the nature around you. Sign up for iNaturalist and use it to help you ID your nature sightings everytime you’re outdoors! Submit them on the platform and contribute to the global community of biodiversity champions like you!
Website Resources
Calscape | California’s Native Plant Gardening Destination
Nature for All – Nature for All in Los Angeles (lanatureforall.org)
Life in the City (urbanevolution-litc.com)
LEARN
California Biodiversity Facts:
Biodiversity comes from the words “biological diversity” and refers to the variety of life on earth. Think of our varied iconic landscapes in California – like a coastal redwood forest – then imagine all the living world that lives with it, from everything as small as bacteria and fungus to as big as the redwood tree and the ecosystem that surrounds it. This is the biodiversity of California.
California is one of the most biodiverse regions in the world and one of 36 Global Biodiversity Hotspots. These are areas containing exceptional concentrations of endemic plant and animal species found nowhere else on the planet, but also experiencing high rates of habitat loss.
Of any state in the U.S., California has both the highest total number of species and the highest number of endemic species (i.e., those that occur nowhere else).
California has the most rare and imperiled species of any state with more than 30% of California’s species threatened with extinction!
Contributions of Native American Tribes to Biodiversity:
California Native American tribes have played a central role in stewarding nature and safeguarding biodiversity since time immemorial. These tribes and tribal communities, having persisted from the state-sanctioned historical wrongs committed against them, have maintained relationships with, and knowledges of, California’s lands, coastal waters, and freshwater systems.
Tribal connection, ownership, stewardship, and uses of ancestral and traditional areas— including living, fishing, hunting, gathering, and ceremony—are central not only to tribal identity and sovereignty, but also biodiversity protection and ecosystem function. Biocultural significance, which accounts for the interconnected nature of people and places, is a critical component of biodiversity and particularly important for ensuring that conservation initiatives include the needs and priorities of California Native American tribes and traditional cultural practitioners.
