One California homeowner is turning his entire yard into a water-smart microforest designed to support wildlife, conserve resources, and bring nature closer to home.
Every year, World Nature Conservation Day reminds us of something we already know but can easily forget: protecting nature is not only the responsibility of governments, scientists, or large conservation organizations. Ordinary people and grassroots groups can take part wherever they live.
For the California Institute of Environmental Design & Management (CIEDM), that idea is especially relevant this year. World Nature Conservation Day, observed on July 28, and Earth Overshoot Day, which falls on July 30 in 2026, both highlight the need to protect natural resources and ecosystems. We decided to mark the two observances not simply by talking about conservation, but by putting that idea into practice through a series of local, community, and citizen science activities.
One of the most personal parts of that effort takes place at the Arcadia Ecohome Microforest in Arcadia, California. The site is a National Wildlife Federation Certified Wildlife Habitat, as well as a Certified Monarch Waystation and Certified Pollinator Habitat. For us, it is more than a garden. It is a place where people can practice conservation on a scale they can see and participate in.
This year, I made a Green Hour pledge through the National Wildlife Federation’s “Come Together for Nature with the Americas” initiative, committing to spend two hours a day at the microforest. We also planned landscape rewilding and cleanup work to maintain and improve habitat for monarchs, butterflies, and other pollinators.
Working in a small urban space may seem far removed from the larger environmental challenges facing the planet. But that is precisely why I believe these spaces matter. They give us somewhere to begin.
Earth Overshoot Day reminds us why those beginnings matter. The date marks the point in the year when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services exceeds what Earth’s ecosystems can regenerate during that year. It is a global measure of a global problem, but the choices behind that problem are ultimately made by people, communities, institutions, and governments.
Conservation therefore cannot remain an abstract idea. It has to become something we practice.
That practice also includes paying attention to the nature around us. As part of Project Phoenix 2026, the Ecohome Microforest is again registered as a site for community science monitoring. The project examines the effects of smoke on birds in neighborhoods across three U.S. West Coast states. Bird walks and bioblitz activities at and around the microforest will allow observations to be recorded and shared through eBird.
We are also participating in the 10th anniversary of the International Monarch Monitoring Blitz, a North American community science initiative. At the microforest, we will document observations and interactions involving monarchs and the growth of tropical milkweed at our certified Monarch Waystation, sharing information through citizen science platforms including iNaturalist and Project Noha.
These activities may look modest compared with the scale of environmental problems. But community science offers people a way to become observers and participants rather than simply audiences. A bird sighting, a monarch observation, or a record of seasonal changes can contribute to a much larger body of knowledge.
Conservation also means speaking up for places beyond our own neighborhoods.
This summer, I added my name to a Nature for All message supporting continued protection of the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument, located just north of Arcadia. I also joined a Wilderness Society campaign calling for continued protection of the Greater Chaco region in New Mexico from new oil and gas drilling. Through Conservation International, I joined a campaign supporting the protection of vital forest ecosystems and plan to share our experience managing and rewilding the Ecohome Microforest.
I also signed a Stand.earth petition calling on the British Columbia and Canadian federal governments to reject the Tilbury LNG expansion plan in order to protect fragile coastal and marine wildlife in the Salish Sea.
These actions are different from planting a native species or monitoring a bird, but they are connected by the same principle: conservation requires participation at many levels. Caring for a local habitat and advocating for threatened ecosystems elsewhere are not competing efforts. They are parts of the same responsibility.
Another part of conservation is less visible but just as important: learning from others and building relationships.
CIEDM serves as a partner for IUCN’s Nature for All initiative, which works to inspire people to love, connect with, and care for nature. I also participate in IUCN’s Research Taskforce and Inter-commission Human-nature Connectedness Task Force. In August, I am scheduled to take part in meetings focused on capacity building and research.
For a grassroots organization, these networks provide opportunities to exchange knowledge, build capacity, and learn how people in different places are approaching the relationship between humans and nature.
That relationship is ultimately what connects all of these activities.
We often think of conservation as protecting something that exists outside of us: a forest, a mountain, a river, a species. But the more time I spend working with nature, the more I see conservation as something that also changes how we understand our own place within the environment.
A microforest in a residential neighborhood can provide habitat. A community science project can turn an ordinary bird sighting into useful information. A conservation campaign can give people a voice in decisions affecting distant ecosystems. A few hours spent maintaining a garden can reconnect someone with the living systems around them.
None of these actions solves the environmental crisis on its own. But conservation has never depended on a single action.
For me, World Nature Conservation Day and Earth Overshoot Day are opportunities to remember that we do not have to wait for the perfect moment, the perfect project, or a large organization to begin. We can start with the patch of land outside our door, the wildlife in our neighborhood, the information we share, the campaigns we support, and the communities we choose to join.
2026 is also the UN International Year of Volunteers for Sustainable Development. Our activities around these global observances are one small contribution to that greater effort.
The most important lesson may be simple: conservation becomes meaningful when it moves from something we care about to something we do.
And sometimes, doing something begins right where we live.
