About 26 years ago, a group of neighbors living in Amador County were sitting on the back porch of Katherine Evatt’s home outside of Jackson. Enjoying the view of the sky, stunning mountains and endless forest life, the group wondered what exactly it would take to keep the region exactly as it was in that moment.

Since then, that group has stopped dam expansions, opened rivers and hiking areas to the public, helped restore salmon populations, and won a massive grant to restore a 250,000-acre stretch of the Central Sierra watershed.