San Gregorio Environmental Resource Center

Interpretive panel we sponsored at San Gregorio State Beach.Mission

Founded in 1988, our mission is to preserve and protect habitat for endangered species of the Santa Cruz Mountain bioregion, focusing on the San Gregorio (SG) Watershed and San Mateo County coast. 

Our activities include creek water quality monitoring; field trips for Pescadero, La Honda, and Kings Mountain elementary school students; restoring habitat; sponsoring Coastal Cleanup Days at our Adopt-A-Beach site, SG State Beach; and cleaning 8 miles of Hwy 84 from SG Beach to La Honda as part of the Adopt-A-Highway program. We work closely with the community and other groups to share information and resources. We also provide the training and equipment necessary for our programs.

Needs

The funds we raise will be used to continue and expand our Watershed Education Program in local schools (curriculum, instructors, and field trip transportation), replace obsolete stream monitoring instruments, and maintain field equipment.

Watershed Education Program

A local artist guides students in a salmonid-themed art project.In 2017, SGERC initiated the Watershed Education Program (WEP) with teachers from the La Honda-Pescadero and Cabrillo Unified School Districts. The curriculum is geared towards 4th and 5th graders, and focuses on the watershed, scientific observation, stream monitoring (water tests), and the life cycle of the salmonid.  We also sponsor a local artist to guide the students in a salmonid-themed art project. 

The WEP culminates with a field trip to two watershed sites with SGERC volunteers. Those sites include the Playbowl in La Honda, the lagoon in San Gregorio, the Pescadero Marsh, and Memorial County Park in Loma Mar. At each site, students make observations about the watershed, and we help them measure the temperature, depth, turbidity (water clarity), conductivity (similar to salinity), pH (acidity), and dissolved oxygen content of the water.

Another program we have sponsored in the past is Trout in the Classroom (TIC), offered through the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The students at Pescadero Elementary loved watching the trout eggs hatch and develop into releasable fry. These funds will help us bring TIC back to local schools, and to develop a new high school level watershed education curriculum.

Stream Monitoring Program

San Gregorio, La Honda, and the surrounding areas are some of the only communities in the Bay Area whose local watershed also serves as residents' household water source. As members of these communities, we're ever vigilant over our watershed's health for all the plants, animals, and residents whose survival depends on it.

A volunteer performs water quality tests at a site on La Honda Creek.Using field test kits, we measure five basic water parameters to assess the health of waterways in the San Gregorio Watershed: dissolved oxygen, water temperature, pH, conductivity, and turbidity. The data we've collected over the past 17 years at various sites is found on our Watershed Data page.

Most of the equipment we currently use for stream monitoring was purchased in 2006. Our YSI 556 Multiparameter Instruments were declared obsolete by their manufacturer in 2019, so parts to repair or refurbish them are no longer available. We need to replace the YSIs with two modern instruments - one for each of our two monitoring kits.