Mission

The mission of the Ventana Wilderness Alliance is to protect, preserve, and restore the wilderness qualities and biodiversity of the public lands within California's northern Santa Lucia Mountains and Big Sur coast.

What We Do

The Ventana Wilderness Alliance (VWA) began as an advocacy organization, with the initial objective of surveying the Wilderness qualities of roadless lands within the spectacular Los Padres National Forest
Monterey Ranger District. The recommendations of this survey came to fruition with the 2002 Big Sur Wilderness and Conservation Act, which added 54,000 acres to the Ventana and Silver Peak Wilderness areas.

However, it didn't take long for the organization to realize that these newly expanded Wilderness areas
needed much more than legislative protection. With ever-increasing visitation and a constantly
dwindling Forest Service budget, Wilderness character was compromised across popular backcountry destinations, as agency boots on the ground all but disappeared. To further complicate matters, a series of landscape-level wildfires (including the massive 2016 Soberanes Wildland Fire) wrought havoc on seldom-maintained backcountry trails and camps. Meanwhile, seasoned "Ventanaphiles" raised concerns of an entire generation obsessed with technology and seemingly detached from the concept of Wilderness.

The VWA launched a Youth in Wilderness Program to engage local young people in wildlands stewardship projects, and a Trail Program to recruit, train and deploy volunteers to restore and maintain
public trails. Inspired by the 10-year Wilderness Stewardship Challenge, the VWA soon developed a
Volunteer Wilderness Ranger (VWR) Program to replace lost agency capacity, educate visitors, and
protect Wilderness values such as naturalness, solitude and opportunities for primitive recreation.

The Youth in Wilderness program has since partnered with dozens of local schools and initiatives to
introduce nearly 2,500 students to their amazing public lands. Over 200 VWA volunteers have dedicated more than 35,000 hours to a wide range of stewardship projects such as maintaining trails and removing backcountry trash and debris. The organization has also funded contract crews from American Conservation Experience and the California Department of Forestry to tackle remote or difficult trail projects beyond the range of the average volunteer. In 2016 alone, over 100 VWA volunteers donated 6,056 hours of real-time Wilderness stewardship on 146 trailhead and backcountry outings.