LandWatch Monterey County's mission is to create a blueprint for sustainability, using Monterey County as a model.
Since 1997, we've protected our region's quality of life for current and future generations, tackling housing affordability, urban sprawl, climate change, and infrastructure equity through grassroots action. By expanding public participation in planning, we connect people to government and defend natural resources.
LandWatch advocates for housing and protection of Monterey County's natural lands, farmland, and water. But lasting change depends on the entire community carrying the work forward. Emerging leaders, especially in the Salinas Valley, are too often absent from the rooms where land use decisions get made.
LandWatch seeks to change that by expanding its community network into a grassroots leadership pipeline, training young professionals and early-career residents in the technical and civic skills needed to advocate for their own communities, including the Latino communities that make up much of the Salinas Valley's workforce. Through workshops, mentorship, and direct involvement in land use initiatives, participants learn to read a staff report, review a development proposal, and organize their neighbors.
By investing in young leaders now, LandWatch builds the institutional capacity to sustain equitable land use in Monterey County for generations, aligned with the communities most affected by these inequities.
LandWatch has demonstrated time and again that knowledge is power. LandWatch is an organization that keeps an eye on all major land use issues around our County and consistently advocates for the public’s interest from an informed and thoughtful position. From my perspective, Monterey County would look entirely different without LandWatch — think cookie cutter developments instead of rolling hills along Highway 68, or sprawled out, centerless municipalities, instead of firm lines and policies redirecting development where it belongs — with existing development, infrastructure, and resources. Support for LandWatch is not only an expression of gratitude for what our County is today — thanks to 29 years of hard work — it’s an investment in a future that considers the entire community while protecting open space and farmland.
- Mary Adams, 5th District County Supervisor (retired), Pebble Beach
