Impact Report 2024
Protecting Our Most Precious
For decades, Tuolumne River Trust has protected and restored vulnerable ecosystems throughout the Greater Yosemite Region.
reflecting on a remarkable year
Dear Community,
As I reflect on the past year, I am filled with immense pride and deep gratitude for the remarkable progress we have made together. Our journey has been one of passion, dedication, and unwavering commitment to the Tuolumne River watershed and the Greater Yosemite Region, and it is with great excitement that I share our 2024 Impact Report with you.
This year has truly highlighted the power of community and collaboration. Thanks to your generous support and shared long-term vision, we were able to bring to fruition projects that have been decades in the making. We celebrated the grand opening of Dos Rios, California’s newest state park and the largest floodplain restoration project in the state's history. We also broke ground on La Grange, a major in-channel and floodplain restoration project along the lower Tuolumne, which will benefit salmon, steelhead, and rainbow trout. These milestones represent more than just fleeting moments of accomplishment; they underscore the importance of sustainable, long-term commitment to effect meaningful change.
In contemplating the current climate crisis and the impact of decisions made generations ago, I am reminded of the opportunity we have to write a better future today. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the urgency of our global climate crisis, but I find solace and hope in the river.
Change takes time, and I am forever grateful to the group of rafters who had the foresight to fight and protect this river over forty years ago. Continuing to work toward our long-term vision of a thriving watershed where people are deeply connected to the river is the best way I know to honor this legacy.
Our work has evolved over the past forty years and continues to adapt, just like a river. The need for climate resilience is stronger now than ever before, and Tuolumne River Trust is at the forefront of mitigation and adaptation techniques that ensure this river and watershed remain healthy for all.
I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to our dedicated staff, volunteers, partners, and, of course, our incredible donors. Your belief in our mission and unwavering support are the driving forces behind our success. Together, we are making a difference, and I am deeply honored to lead this extraordinary organization.
Thank you for being an essential part of our community and for helping us turn our vision into reality. I invite you to read through this report to see the full scope of what we have accomplished together.
Sincerely,
Patrick Koepele
Executive Director, Tuolumne River Trust
Climate Resilience (n.)*
the ability of people, ecosystems, and social and economic systems to prepare for, anticipate, and respond to climate-related events, trends, or disturbances. It's also the ability to recover from climate shocks and maintain functions, even in a different climate.
Tuolumne River Trust is dedicated to building climate resilience through impactful mitigation and adaptation. By restoring meadows, floodplains, and forests, we create vital carbon sinks and offer essential fire and flood protections, nurturing habitats for endangered species and fostering biodiversity.
We fight for equitable water infrastructure and rights that adapt to climate change, prioritizing the needs of frontline communities in the Central Valley and addressing the rising water costs for Bay Area residents and small businesses.
Our programs instill environmental literacy and nature-based skills in the next generation, while promoting civic engagement and professional development. Through teamwork and a shared commitment to our natural spaces, we strengthen social bonds and community resilience.
*UN Common Guidance on Resilience
Joining Forces to Make an Impact
Adaptation in the face of the climate crisis isn’t just about protecting landscapes—it’s about transforming ourselves. At TRT, nearly half of our staff and board members—45%—came from different fields before being called into environmental work when they joined us. This shift reflects how we’re adapting too, bringing fresh passion and determination to the forefront. It’s a testament to how, in times of challenge, people rise to meet new demands, forging deeper connections with nature and one another. By welcoming diverse voices and expertise, TRT is evolving to better protect our rivers and communities, ensuring resilience for the future.
A Community Powered Watershed
Tuolumne River Trust is deeply rooted along the entire watershed, with our dedicated staff, board, and advisors stretching from Tuolumne County to the Bay Area. This wide-reaching presence underscores our heartfelt commitment to a holistic vision, embracing the interconnectedness of our communities and ecosystems. United by the flow of the Tuolumne River, we work passionately across these diverse regions, ensuring that our efforts to protect and restore the river resonate through every valley and bay it touches.
Counties where our staff and board are located
A Community Powered Watershed
Tuolumne River Trust is deeply rooted along the entire watershed, with our dedicated staff, board, and advisors stretching from Tuolumne County to the Bay Area. This wide-reaching presence underscores our heartfelt commitment to a holistic vision, embracing the interconnectedness of our communities and ecosystems. United by the flow of the Tuolumne River, we work passionately across these diverse regions, ensuring that our efforts to protect and restore the river resonate through every valley and bay it touches.
Counties where our staff and board are located
“Our planet provides everything we need such as clean air, water, and food. I wanted to be part of an organization that contributes to ensuring that these resources remain abundant and healthy for my children and their children. If we nurture it, it will continue to provide comfort and security.”
— Ryan Cerezo, TRT Staff Member
100%
OF OUR STAFF SAY THEY JOINED TRT TO BUILD CLIMATE RESILIENCY, SUPPORT ENVIRONMENTAL INITIATIVES AND RESPOND TO THE CLIMATE CRISIS.
38%
STAFF GROWTH LAST YEAR
Our Watershed Warriors
Our volunteers’ dedication, passion, and hands-on efforts embody the belief that each of us plays a vital role in building climate resilience. Whether restoring habitats, advocating for water rights, or educating future stewards, these volunteers are a constant source of inspiration.
45
Volunteer Events
298
Total Volunteers
156
First-time Participants
1,811
Total Volunteer Hours
Our Supporters
Tuolumne River Trust extends deepest appreciation to our supporters who advocate for increased water flows; champion youth education; and protect our forests, meadows, and wildlife habitats. The commitment of our donors—individuals, foundations, businesses, corporations, government agencies, and nongovernmental organizations—is what enables us to work in partnership to protect the Tuolumne River and the Greater Yosemite Region for generations to come.
102
NUMBER OF FIRST
TIME SUPPORTERS
100%
76%
INCREASE IN
MAJOR DONOR GIVING
46%
BOARD PARTICIPATION
INCREASE IN
DONATIONS FY23
RIPPLES OF IMPACT
Thanks to your generous donations, this past year has been a triumph in protecting, restoring, and advocating for our cherished watersheds. Your support ensures a vibrant future for both our natural landscapes and the communities that depend on them.
Youth-Led Change: Park Youth Committee Wins Big at Modesto City Council
This spring, TRT’s Park Youth Committee (PYC) presented their Resolution for Equitable Parks and Protective and Healthy Environments to the Modesto City Council. After years of preparation, the resolution passed 6-0.
Throughout this momentous City Council meeting, PYC members shared the results of years of community data collection, neighborhood surveys, visioning meetings, and plans for actionable change.
This equity-based approach means that funding and resources for parks in Modesto will now be prioritized based on economic need—a direct benefit to the economically disenfranchised neighborhoods along the banks of the lower Tuolumne. In this way, the PYC creates social and ecological resilience for the Tuolumne River and the community that lives beside it. This work prepares PYC members as future climate champions no matter where their burgeoning careers take them.
Full Circle Floodplain Restoration: Ali Manzo and Dos Rios State Park
Ali Manzo’s connection to Dos Rios State Park began in 2015 as a volunteer with Tuolumne River Trust. She worked alongside many others to plant native trees on site. Today, these trees signal a long-form commitment to climate resilience—their growth contributes to floodplain health which in turn ensures that excess snowmelt and stormwater have somewhere to go before they reach human communities.
Today, as a California State Park Interpreter, Ali mirrors the resilience of the trees she planted in Dos Rios’ early days by offering accessible bilingual programs about this critical and sensitive ecosystem thriving in Central Valley’s backyard. Ali shares that teaching people about the largest floodplain restoration project in California is a true full-circle moment, one that mirrors the restorative story of Dos Rios itself.
Community-Powered River Resilience: Chris Guptill and 100 River Cleanups
This year marked Operation 9-2-99 and Chris Guptill’s 100th river cleanup along the banks of the lower Tuolumne River in Modesto. Motivated to create a healthy river and a sense of pride in the larger Modesto community, Chris’s work also reflects the shared labor of 5,550 volunteers working tirelessly over the past ten years to remove trash and other toxins from the Tuolumne’s waters.
When Chris began this ambitious work, he realized his strengths: “I don’t have a lot of money, and I can’t influence decision-makers with it, so I put what I had into my efforts, and that was time and dedication. I think we deserve to be at the table when it comes to the health of the riparian habitat in and along the river.”
Chris’s work builds climate resilience through ecological and social means. It ensures access to clean water and builds strong social accountability in the face of ongoing change. Through community-led practices, social and ecological health has the potential to flourish along the Tuolumne River in Central Valley. This year the team removed 58 tons of trash, including over 250 tires and 52 shopping carts.
Rafting & Restoration: Building Resilience Along the Tuolumne
Each summer, TRT tags along on commercial rafting trips to plant willow at riverside restoration sites that are otherwise impossible to reach on foot. This critical restoration work slows erosion and provides habitat along sections of the Tuolumne River damaged by the 2013 Rim Fire.
On a recent trip, TRT Restoration Specialists Bryn Miller and Margaret Thompson planted just twenty trees before the whole crew had to raft onward. Feeling committed to the ecological importance of this work, Zach, the rafting guide that day, offered to personally plant the remaining thirteen trees on a return weekend trip.
This level of commitment came as no surprise and reminds us that climate resiliency takes root when it combines the social with the ecological. When people work together in coalition with other species, forces, and places, the Tuolumne River thrives.
“It’s really important to accept that fires are becoming more frequent and severe, and that fire is going to happen,” shares Ande Myers, TRT’s newest Forest Health Project Manager. What does it mean to adapt to the reality of megafires? For Ande, such adaptation looked like a career shift into forest health protection and a move from Texas to work with TRT on a series of strategic fuel breaks across 6,000 acres of forest through the Social and Ecological Resilience Across the Landscape (SERAL) project.
This strategic network of pathways along roads and ridgetops reduces fuels in key areas to reduce fire intensity, making firefighting more effective while also creating safer entry and evacuation routes for firefighters.
Much like Ande’s research in school, The SERAL project is focused on letting go of preconceived ideas about what forests should look like. “As the climate, social pressures, and forest fire regimes change, we may not ever be able to have a healthy forest that looks like it did twenty-five years ago, so how do we have a healthy forest today and in ten and thirty years from now?” Ande wonders. Their research and the SERAL project complement each other well, both exploring the science of change and putting actionable plans into practice to create a climate-resilient future in vulnerable forested lands.
A Forest of Changes: Ande Myers and Forest Health in the Stanislaus
Meadows for a Resilient Future: Theo Boettcher and Process-Based Restoration at Boney Flat
At TRT, our restoration work is often driven by personal connections to the land. For Theo Boettcher, one of our restoration specialists, those roots run deep. “Growing up in the backcountry of Humboldt, CA, gave me a sense of responsibility to protect our natural resources,” he reflects. “That led me to explore a career in environmental restoration.”
One of Theo’s key projects is restoring Boney Flat Meadow in the Sierra Nevada. Though small, meadows like Boney Flat are critical for water storage, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity. But decades of humans modifying the environment through activities like road construction, livestock grazing, and stream diversions have eroded the stream bed, lowering the water table and drying out the meadow.
“The solution involves reconnecting the stream with its floodplain using post-assisted log structures (PALS)—essentially man-made beaver dams,” Theo explains. These structures will slow erosion and capture sediment, gradually raising the stream bed and water table, reviving vegetation and supporting diverse species. “Healthy meadows punch way above their weight in terms of ecological impact,” Theo says. “They’re essential for climate resilience, acting as carbon sinks and refuges for wildlife during and after fires.”
“I’m excited to watch the meadow recover,” Theo shares. The work at Boney Flat shows how small interventions can create big impacts, building climate resilience one meadow at a time.
Understanding the challenges facing the Tuolumne River means confronting the root cause: misguided political decisions. TRT’s policy work, led by Peter Drekmeier, challenges the politically-manufactured water scarcity mentality that drives ecosystem collapse and affects salmon, frontline communities, Bay Area citizens, and the very health of the Tuolumne River from Hetch Hetchy through the Central Valley and into the San Francisco Bay-Delta.
Earlier this year, Peter intensified efforts in our struggle with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), which oversees much of the Bay Area’s water supply. This revived campaign focuses on the 1988 Kirkwood Agreement, which required the SFPUC to conduct a fish study and improve river flows along a twelve-mile stretch of the Tuolumne River directly downstream of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir.
The decades-old promise of the Kirkwood Agreement is still unresolved, so this year Peter and a coalition of environmental and fishing groups began pushing back. Together, the coalition documented the history of the agreement and contemporary science about fish and flows. They submitted letters to the SFPUC and the National Park Service, which will serve as the lead agency during the environmental review process.
When the SFPUC finally releases its updated Instream Flow Management Plan in the fall of 2024, TRT’s coalition will lobby Yosemite representatives to stand in alliance with the Tuolumne River.
This iterative work builds social and ecological resilience through ongoing dedication. Peter leads TRT’s advocacy work by taking the example of the river to heart—steadily flowing onward, much like the Tuolumne eroding granite bit by bit over time.
Policy that Connects Us All: Peter Drekmeier’s Advocacy and the Kirkwood Agreement
Embracing diversity, inclusivity, and indigenous stewardship, we are committed to creating a thriving river ecosystem for all.
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During my childhood, I was never able to experience the joy of outdoor activities such as camping, canoeing, or simply appreciating the beauty of nature. It took me years to learn these skills and enjoy the outdoors. Even to this day, I am still learning. This is why the Tuolumne River Trust is crucial in educating, advocating, and restoring the Tuolumne; they help create opportunities for people to recreate outdoors.
Jose Borroel
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With your support, TRT educates hundreds more students, just like my son, and help them see the value of being leaders in their community and taking action to protect and restore their neighborhoods.
Shanyn Avila
Charting Our Future in Uncertain Times
In these uncertain times, one thing is clear: our commitment to the Tuolumne River and its watershed will never waver. As climate change intensifies, we turn our face to the Greater Yosemite Region centered on the Tuolumne Watershed. Together with the Merced Watershed to the south and the Stanislaus Watershed to the north, this region represents an iconic landscape that benefits millions of Californians and the nation.
We’re expanding our efforts by growing our team, advocating for increased water flows, restoring critical habitats, and building
partnerships with diverse communities, including those historically underrepresented. We’re also exploring new land restoration opportunities, improving parks and access in the Central Valley, and fostering environmental education for all ages to create lasting connections to the river.
Whether through advocacy, restoration, clean-ups, or education, we will continue to steward healthier watersheds, ensuring they are resilient in the face of future challenges. Our dedication to this mission remains steadfast.
