Wade Crowfoot – California’s Leadership in Nature-Based Solutions: Building Climate Resilience Through Ecosystem Restoration
Bioneers | Published: May 6, 2025 Restoring Ecosystems Video
California is harnessing the power of nature to tackle climate change and build resilience against wildfires, droughts, floods, and extreme heat. By restoring ecosystems and integrating natural infrastructure into climate policy, we are enhancing biodiversity, improving public health, and supporting sustainable communities. Secretary Crowfoot addresses California’s commitment to Nature-Based Solutions as a cornerstone of climate action, its influence on national and global initiatives, and the importance of continued investment and collaboration to protect people, economies, and ecosystems.
This talk was delivered at the 2025 Bioneers Conference.
Wade Crowfoot, on the frontlines of environmental leadership throughout his long career in the public and non-profit sectors, California’s Natural Resources Secretary since 2019, leads efforts to conserve California’s environment and natural resources, overseeing an agency of 25,000+ employees spread across 26 departments, commissions, and conservancies charged with stewarding the state’s forests, natural lands, rivers, water supplies, coasts, wildlife and biodiversity, as well as helping oversee its world-leading clean energy transition, including a commitment to conserve 30% of its land and coastal waters by 2030. Secretary Crowfoot has led efforts to navigate California’s record-breaking droughts, floods, and wildfires and has initiated a new era of partnerships with the state’s Native American tribes.
EXPLORE MORE
Kate Lundquist and Brock Dolman: How We’re Winning the Campaign to Rehydrate the West
Great news about the Bring Back the Beaver campaign from the folks at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center’s Water Institute.
The Restorative Revolution: How Indigenous Leadership and Allyship Catalyzed the Biggest River Restoration in US History
In this podcast episode, Yurok fisherman and tribal leader Sammy Gensaw and environmental scientist-turned-activist Craig Tucker share the epic story of how Indigenous leadership and non-Indian allyship made the impossible inevitable: the biggest-ever dam removal and salmon restoration in history.