Woodside-Atherton Garden Club

Audubon Canyon Ranch is a not-for-profit environmental and education organization which was founded in 1962 to protect a large heron and egret breeding ground from development. Its mission to protect nature through land preservation, nature education and conservation science began by saving a 503-acre dairy ranch that was being subdivided in order to make way for a marina and four-lane freeway. Fiftyplus years later, the ACR acts as a guardian of 5,000 acres of tidal flats, marshlands, coastal prairie, oak woodlands and redwood groves within four main nature preserves in Marin and Sonoma counties.

In 1963, the GCA Founders Fund Award supported the Audubon Canyon Ranch’s efforts for land preservation and named them the outstanding conservation project in the US. The Bolinas Lagoon Preserve’s North Canyon site was renamed Garden Club of America Canyon, now referred to simply as Garden Club Canyon. Six years after the Founders Fund Award, this entire area (renamed the Martin Griffin Preserve in 2010) was designated a National Natural Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The Audubon Canyon Ranch’s Martin Griffin Preserve, which includes the Garden Club Canyon, has become one of the most significant and studied Great Egret and Great Blue Heron nesting sites on the West Coast.