Restoration + Conservation
Lakeside’s River Park Conservancy leads a variety of conservation and stewardship projects focused on habitat restoration, ecological resilience, and community access.
Below are our current active projects, each contributing to a stronger, greener future along the San Diego River.
Current Projects
Help plant 6,500 native willow trees over the next two years to restore habitat, improve water quality, and support long-term river health.
#restoration #volunteer opportunity
Field Station
Our new Field Station expands our capacity for education, research, workshops, and community programming along the San Diego River.
#education facilities
volunteers wanted
Some of our completed projects below illustrate our long-term commitment to restoring river habitats, supporting wildlife, managing landscapes, and connecting people to the watershed’s ecological story. Their successes continue to shape our work today.
Past Projects
Hanson El Monte Pond Project
Launched in 2015, this 85-acre restoration reshaped the former sand pit in the El Monte Valley into a functioning wetland and floodplain system. The project included shallowing the pond, regrading the surrounding shelf, and creating an inlet to disperse river flood flows—reducing downstream flooding. Today, the restored wetland supports diverse birdlife, including red-winged blackbirds and other riparian species.
HaHana Property
Purchased in 2011, this 6.5-acre site along Los Coches Creek contains a remarkable mosaic of habitats—from riparian woodland to coastal sage scrub—adjacent to critical conserved lands. Restoration efforts focused on removing dense stands of arundo donax, opening the creek for wildlife movement and reconnecting species to an important corridor within the watershed.
Fire Risk Reduction
Between 2003–2004, we acquired 100 acres of heavily altered river property and transformed it into functional habitat. This project removed 600,000 cubic yards of industrial fill, restored natural sediment flow by removing river constrictions, filled old mining pits to improve flood behavior, created a constructed wetland to treat stormwater from Los Coches Creek, and built a mile of the San Diego River Trail.