Join us Sunday, January 24 at Ocean Hills Church, 9:30 AM at the Majorie Luke Theater, 721 E. Cota in Santa Barbara as we introduce our next project called Five Loaves. This project will provide food for families in need, restore local farmland, provide practical was to steward creation locally, and serve as a conservation study of native pollinators. You can participate by volunteering your time at the project site, explain the vision of this project to your church, business, or other other groups, partner with us financially to make this project a reality here: http://tiny.cc/jgkRt

A Rocha promotes biodiversity through its worldwide work and a is a proud member of the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature). The IUCN’s work helps identify useful solutions to development and environmental challenges through its world-wide network of governmental and non-governmental organizations and was founded in 1948. Learn more about the work of IUCN by clicking here.

Join Jonna Engle and crew 9 a.m. this Saturday at Rincon. We will start our trash collection at the picnic table in the upper parking lot as part of the 25th annual Coastal Clean Up Day. According to the California Coastal Commission, more than 70,000 volunteers worked together to collect more than 1,600,000 pounds of trash and recyclables from our beaches, lakes, and waterways in 2008!

Welcome to Travis, our summer intern. He will be working with the local A Rocha team to conduct a habitat survey and begin planning our first conservation project in our local foothills. We are excited to begin the conservation phase of our work - a big thanks to Santa Barbara Community Church for allowing us to use a portion of their site for this purpose. Watch for photos of the work on our Flickr site.

We are grateful for a partnership with Santa Barbara Community Church to begin planning conservation work on their property. We look forward to providing more details in the weeks to come.

An intriguing interview with ecologist Stuart L. Pimm - read it all the way through.