Growing the Movement Together: CNPS San Diego at the 2026 CNPS Conference

The conference theme, “Growing the Movement: Together for Native Plants,” fit the moment. With climate change and biodiversity loss accelerating — and political and economic pressures threatening hard-won protections — the need for our voices and collective action feels more urgent than ever. In Riverside, an intergenerational mix of members, scientists, educators, conservation and land-management practitioners, and Tribal partners gathered to move the work forward.

The program underscored concrete momentum already underway: California is more than halfway toward its 30×30 goal; a statewide vegetation mapping effort is generating actionable science for land-use decisions; and native plant gardening is transforming communities and reconnecting people with nature where they live, work, and play.

Against that backdrop, CNPS San Diego contributed in two complementary ways: a poster on Miramar Vernal Pool Preserve restoration and a lightning talk on the chapter’s mini-grants and scholarships program.

Poster Session: Miramar Vernal Pool Preserve Restoration

One of CNPS San Diego’s featured contributions was a poster presentation on the Miramar Vernal Pool Preserve restoration project. The poster was developed by the chapter’s Miramar stewardship team — a collaborative effort led by Lee Gordon, Vince Scheidt, and Christine Hoey.

Miramar is a striking example of what chapter community can accomplish. When the preserve was overwhelmed by dumping and debris, it took many different roles working together — people who organized the logistics and brought in dumpsters, and many volunteers willing to do hard physical work to haul out mountains of trash by hand.

The work did not stop there. Members kept showing up for follow-up cleanups and invasive seedling pulls, and the chapter has also offered guided visits to support education while protecting the site. A community fundraiser helped make the removal of twelve large eucalyptus trees possible — a major milestone in reducing ongoing impacts on the pools.

Alongside this hands-on care, the project also includes scientific monitoring and mapping. The preserve supports more than 150 native plant species and includes three listed rare and endangered species — which is why careful monitoring and long-term protection matter.

Poster-session visitors were clearly impressed by what the chapter community pulled off — the scale of the cleanup, the visible turnaround, and the fact that the work has continued year after year.

Explore the full Miramar Vernal Pool Preserve story: before-and-after photos, “Restoration by the Numbers,” and highlights from the Big Cleanup, Big Bloom, and ongoing stewardship.

Lightning Talk: Mini-Grants and Scholarships

CNPS San Diego also contributed through a short talk by Robert Byrnes, who highlighted the chapter’s mini-grants and scholarships program. Together with the Miramar poster, the lightning talk showed two ways chapters can grow the movement: hands-on stewardship and practical support for learning, research, and community-based native plant projects.

At a glance, the program includes:

• Research Grants: $6,000 annually (up to two awards) for college and postgraduate research on California native plants.

• Mini-Grants: up to $500; accepted year-round and awarded quarterly to support schools, nonprofits, and community native-plant education projects.

• Educational Scholarship: full tuition ($895) for the SDSU Global Campus course Field Botany of San Diego County.

If you know a student, school, or community project that could benefit, please share CNPS San Diego grants and scholarships

Additional chapter voices

In addition to the poster session and Robert Byrnes’s talk, chapter members also helped enrich the conference program. Greg Rubin presented a well-attended 20-minute talk on fire ecology and native plants, and Holly McMullen, our Propagation Chair, gave a lightning talk –Using a Campus Garden to Build a Teaching Herbarium – about native plant education with students at Southwestern College.

Beyond our featured poster and lightning talk, it was energizing to see chapter members contributing across the program. We left Riverside energized and grateful for the conversations, the shared learning, and the sense of statewide community.