Increasing the Capacity and Collaboration to Conserve the Gaviota Coast

Minding the (Planning and Implementation) Gap

   Bren students. Photo by Madison Calbert

LegacyWorks is proud to collaborate with the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at UCSB for a master’s group project for the 2025 academic cycle. Five talented students, Thuy-Tien Bui, Madi Calbert, Andrew Palacios, Natalie Smith, and Priscilla Ta, will play a unique role in conducting a conservation and partnership gap analysis. Their work will inform and prioritize collaborative efforts in the Gaviota coast region, with the aim of increasing partnerships, funding, and mutual support for the long run. 

The Gaviota coast, as the last remaining stretch of undeveloped coastline in Southern California, is a critical focal point for numerous conservation initiatives. The region, located at the convergence of multiple ecoregions, is a significant biodiversity hotspot supporting many essential ecosystems and the plants and animals that depend on them. However, climate change and a wide range of pressures threaten the extraordinary biodiversity of this region. Urgent action is needed to meet the scale and pace of these challenges.

The goal of the Bren project team will be to get a comprehensive view of the many local, state, and federal level efforts to enhance and restore the region's ecological and climate resilience within the larger landscape. The team research project will seek to help solve an issue that can cause many large landscape efforts to get stuck. That challenge – the planning-implementation gap - occurs when conflicts between recommended action and feasibility exist. The students will identify regional conservation priorities based on models of ecological indicators and interviews with local stakeholders. The interviews will also give the students and LegacyWorks an understanding of the factors motivating local conservation projects. At the end of the project, the group will provide LegacyWorks with modeled priority areas with anticipated priority conservation projects, identify barriers to advancement, and provide recommendations for how to best get those projects moving.

To initiate this project, LegacyWorks sponsored a Bren Summer Intern program. During this program, the students played a crucial role by interviewing over 20 different partners representing local nonprofits as well as federal, state, and local agencies. Their findings from these interviews will provide a critical grounding and foundation for the more extensive assignment. We thank The Gaviota Coast Conservancy and the Coastal Ranches Conservancy for funding the summer internship.