CNDDB News Blog

Updated November 8, 2019, the list includes vegetation Alliances, Associations, Special Stands, and their respective Global and State rarity ranks. PDF and spreadsheet copies of the full list, sensitive communities, and recent changes - along with information about the legacy Natural Community Element Occurrences still found in CNDDB - can be found on the VegCAMP Natural Communities web page.

As the CNDDB program celebrates its 40th birthday this month it seems appropriate to shift our gaze backward.

While the current version of our field survey form is a website, the earlier forms were actual sheets of paper completed in the field. We look upon these old forms with a certain reverence. Our world is in constant change and these documents allow us a glimpse into California’s past.

Here is a CNDDB field survey form from 1980 for Santa Cruz tarplant, Holocarpha macradenia. This population of plants was extirpated during development over the following few years. Only a few handwritten pages remain to show this species ever occurred at this site.

While our program receives a continuous supply of recent data, about a quarter of the sources we use were actually created prior to the establishment of CNDDB. Most older sources are either journal articles or specimen records.

CNDDB has always been a database about history. Each and every one of our records are from the past, whether for a rare species found last month or a century ago. In the last 40 years our tools have evolved, our staff has changed, and many of California’s habitats have been altered permanently. Now, as our program enters its fifth decade, we hope the CNDDB is more relevant than ever. Our data is all about the past. Our mission is all about the future.

Our database was founded by The Nature Conservancy 40 years ago, in November of 1979. Two years later the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (then California Department of Fish and Game) took over the CNDDB. Our department has been continuously updating the database ever since.

The earliest work was done by hand on paper maps. Our processes have shifted year-by-year as new technology has been made available. Our methods have evolved, but throughout it all we have remained committed to our original mission of delivering information on imperiled species to scientists, decision makers, and the public.

If you could go back into the 1970’s for a moment, what would people say if you told them you could pull a phone from your pocket, use it to snap a photo of a flower, and also record your precise latitude and longitude at that same instant?

What will the next 40 years hold? Change, for sure. Expect new technology, increased human population, climate change, and…?

Unexpected things will happen!

Topographic map with hand-drawn CNDDB element occurrences from the middle 1980's.