Threats to the Mountain
What does Mount Diablo Need Saving From?

About half of Mount Diablo is privately held land.  Much of the land surrounding the mountain is also in private hands.  The biggest threat to preserving these natural lands is development.  Here we’ll look at some examples of threats to the mountain and how Save Mount Diablo works to counter these threats. 

A common first step to development is grading. A developer will grade or disk hills in order to make them easier to build on. Sometimes this process takes place prior to the development project's approval which needlessly scars the land and irreparably destroys views. In addition, grading tears up plant life and scares off wildlife - preventing a realistic assessment of a project's environmental impacts, particularly when an area may have been habitat to threatened or endangered species. An example of the damage grading can cause is the Pittsburg Hills Grading Project.

In 2010, developers in Brentwood sought to overturn a voter-approved urban limit line in an effort to build 1300 houses and develop commercial areas on 740 acres of protected agricultural land and open space.  Save Mount Diablo teamed up with Brentwood residents and other environmental groups to defeat the developer-sponsored Measure F in June, 2010.

Similar to Brentwood’s Measure F, developers in San Ramon were seeking to break voter-approved urban growth boundaries protecting the Tassajara Valley.  San Ramon residents, Save Mount Diablo and our allies worked to inform local voters and defeated the measure (Measure W).

While development creates immediate and obvious threats to Mount Diablo, its foothills and habitats, side effects from progress such as pollution and climate change pose serious and lasting dangers as well. Read about the effects of climate change on Mount Diablo beginning on page four of Diablo Watch.