A recent grant from Inland Empire Community Foundation through the FitzDell Gifting Fund is providing new opportunities for volunteers and potential volunteers at Oswit Land Trust.

David Paisley, Community Engagement Director and Deputy Director of Oswit Land Trust said the resources will directly support the nonprofit organization’s various volunteer programs.  

“We have about 250 volunteers who do really the vast majority of the day-to-day work at Oxford Land Trust,” Paisley said. “That goes from building trails to supervising the properties, to picking up trash, to removing invasive species. Grants like this allow us to create the infrastructure to be super cost-effective in maintaining these lands for wildlife and the public.”

It’s the public that matters significantly at this time, in fact. 

“We’re a really new organization,” Paisley said. “Although we started with a single focus, and that was to save Oswit Canyon, and honestly, that was the only focus in the organization. But since we were successful at doing that, other groups approached us to save other property, and that’s really how we went from Save Oswit Canyon to Oswit Land Trust.” 

Save Oswit Canyon was formed in 2021 in an effort to save the canyon from being destroyed by development. The vital effort was designed to preserve the canyon, which is one of the last unprotected Alluvial Fans in the Coachella Valley.  

The canyon is a rare ecological refuge, in fact, for the endangered Peninsular bighorn sheep, fox, bobcats, mountain lions, migratory birds, and other wildlife. 

“Over the last three years, we went from that single property to now having seven properties in negotiation to purchase, and having 10 staff and 250 volunteers,” Paisley said. “So, we are very new and growing, and a dynamic agency in the Coachella Valley, and this didn’t exist 10 years ago. But we’re doing a lot of work right now.” 

Standout achievements include working with the Palm Springs City Council, City Planning Commission, and local wildlife agencies to save the canyon. To that end, the organization collected more than 5,000 signatures from residents to pass a city initiative.  

In October 2020, Oswit Land Trust purchased 114 acres in Oswit Canyon for more than $7 million. This included grants from state and federal agencies, the City of Palm Springs, and other donations from the public. 

Now a member of the Land Trust Alliance, the nonprofit was awarded the Green Citizen Award by the City of Palm Springs in April 2020. Other properties have also been acquired, including a former golf course which is currently being restored into a nature preserve in central Palm Springs. 

Along the way, the nonprofit’s mission has expanded, too, and now includes restoration, educational outreach, and protection of farmland through conservation easements. 

Not to be overlooked is a key event hosted by Oswit Land Trust in spring: the Saving Nature Film Festival. 

“The festival is an opportunity for us to continue with our education programs,” Paisley said. “The City of Palm Springs provided us some funding in order to develop educational programs across the city, and this year, we’ll do more than 30 educational programs, mostly talks and walks, and volunteer activities where local residents can get involved in helping save wildlife and save the environment.  

“The film festival was part of that overall goal to provide education about what’s happening out there in the environment and how people can get involved, and improve what’s happening,” he added. 

Films screening include Our Movement Starts Here, a story about a Southern rural community that inspired the international environmental justice movement and articulated the concept of “environmental racism.” 

Deep Rising, another film, chronicles the fate of the deep ocean, referred to as, “the planet’s last untouched wilderness.” The movie sheds light on the threat from a secretive organization seeking to allow the extraction of seabed metals to address the world’s energy crisis. A signature focus will be the vital relationship between the deep ocean and sustaining life on Earth. 

Mark your calendars. The inaugural festival takes place Thursday, May 1 at Palm Springs Cultural Center.  

Learn more at oswitlandtrust.org. 

This article originally appeared in the Desert Sun, April 2025.

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