Organizations Filed Purposes:
Our Mission is to promote vital, sustainable, and healthy communities and ecosystems through education and best practices for land use planning. We promote the protection, preservation, and restoration of greenbelts, hillsides, ridgelines, arroyos, scenic vistas, and wildlife migration corridors.
To preserve quality of life and maintain the natural beauty of the greater Riverside area by preserving hills, ridgelines, arroyos, scenic vistas, and wildlife corridors by upholding conservation acts, ordinances, codes and General Plan policies, and to educate citizens and officials in sustainable practices for land use and planning.
We obtained legal advice to evaluate and comment on CEQA and NEPA documents, Notices of Preparation, Negative Declarations, Environmental Initial Studies and Environmental Impact Reports for proposed projects in the greater Riverside area and the Santa Ana River Watershed for compliance with conservation policies, sustainability, fire safety, pollution potential, and upholding of voter approved initiatives and local, state, and federal laws that protect wildlife, water, and environmental quality. When necessary, FRH pursued litigation and legal settlements to uphold environmental laws and quality of life for communities of 1000s of people and wildlife. Met with landowners/developers/local residents to negotiate improvements. Succeeded in improving setbacks for trails, noise, light pollution, and fire protection of both homes and conservation lands, improved the configuration of developments including placement of homes, warehouses, roads and associated open space, trail easements, conservation easements, setbacks to watercourses, and incorporation of public trails into city/county trail systems. As lawsuits are won or settled, the reimbursements for legal fees and costs are deposited back into FRH accounts to fund further litigation and public outreach activities (revenue). Some litigation results in settlement funds above reimbursement of legal costs. Such funds are used to further conservation goals and may include, for example, funding future legal fees, conservation easements, public trails improvements, habitat restoration, wildland preservation, and environmental education programs.
FRH provided funds to control non-native and toxic invasive plants that came up after wildfires in riparian areas and on slopes within two local wilderness parks: Riverside County's Box Springs Mountain Reserve, and the City of Riverside's Sycamore Canyon Wilderness Park. These are important conservation areas for two habitat conservation plans, but Riverside City and County Parks lack funds for such work. The work benefits wildlife habitat, wildlife and many hundreds of hikers. Hiking activity increased dramatically during this Covid-19 year. We have a partner in Riparian Repairs for this work. They provide volunteer labor and we reimburse for travel and materials.
Over the last few years, FRH spearheaded the donation and purchase of nearly 900 acres to the Box Springs Mountain Preserve and Islander Park areas of Riverside. The revenue was provided previously to a local land trust from a legal settlement. The project culminated with the September 29, 2020 transfer of 16.06 acres from the Mir Mulla Living Trust on Sugarloaf Mountain and 11 acres (Last property) held by the Rivers and Lands Conservancy (RLC) to the County of Riverside Box Springs Mountain Reserve. FRH was responsible for the coalition of elected officials, County and City agencies and a regional land preservation group (RLC) to secure important land purchases and donations for public open space. This is a significant enhancement for habitat preservations, wildlife corridor connections, and biodiversity. These open space acquisitions have expanded our parks and they provide for an extensive network of recreational hiking trails for visitors and residents of Riverside. FRH was responsible for the legal settlement that provided funds for the land acquisitions, but we did not have any operating costs or income for this item this year. Our board spent many hours working on the land acquisitions.
Executives Listed on Filing
Total Salary includes financial earnings, benefits, and all related organization earnings listed on tax filing
| Name | Title | Hours Per Week | Total Salary |
|---|
| Michele Simpson | board member | 1 | $0 |
| Mary Humboldt | board member | 2 | $0 |
| Scott Simpson | board member | 1 | $0 |
| Kevin Dawson | board member | 3 | $0 |
| Richard Block | board member and legal liaison | 4 | $0 |
| Leonard Nunney | Secretary | 3 | $0 |
| Arlee Montalvo | Chief Financial Officer | 3 | $0 |
| Gurumantra Khalsa | Chief Executive Officer | 3 | $0 |
Data for this page was sourced from XML published by IRS (
public 990 form dataset) from:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/irs-form-990/202141249349300009_public.xml