Yolo Land & Water Defense was founded in 2021 by a group of concerned Yolo County citizens to protect and restore Yolo County’s land and waterways for current residents and future generations.
First, we are working to curb or curtail the environmental harm caused by open pit surface mining companies in Yolo County. In 2021, we partnered with the Sierra Club Yolano Group to file a lawsuit against Yolo County and Teichert Mining to decertify a flawed Environment Impact Report (EIR) and rescind sweetheart 30-year mining entitlements given to the Teichert-Shifler Mining project along lower Cache Creek.
This project is destroying Class I farmland, generating methyl mercury that poisons wildlife and threatens human health, overusing water and damaging critical aquifers, relies heavily on diesel transport, is generating toxic air and noise continuously for 30 years in proximity to the Monument Hill cemetery and the Cache Creek Nature Preserve.
Second, we aim to support the efforts of Native American practitioners to restore Yolo County’s creeks. In curtailing the environmental harm at Cache Creek, we wish to protect and expand the Tending and Gathering Garden in the Cache Creek Nature Preserve. For over two decades, the garden, created in a former Teichert mining pit, has been a hub for applying traditional ecological knowledge to mining reclamation projects.
Third, we hope to foster sustainability and resilience to climate change. As a group of private citizens with a wide range of backgrounds and beliefs, we are actively engaging to ensure that Yolo natural resources are preserved and protected for present and future generations. Whether we are grandparents, parents of young children, farmers and ranchers, toxicologists, water scientists, educators, gardeners, artists or driven by faith to care for God’s Creation, we are committed to advancing the goals and actions of the 2024 Yolo County Climate Action and Adaptation Plan that creates a roadmap for a just transition to a carbon negative county by 2030.