Results: Earth Day & PelicanFest 2025
When a community of likeminded people comes together for our planet, inspiring things will happen. We experienced this firsthand on April 26, 2025 during our annual Earth Day of Action and PelicanFest. It was an energizing day filled with purpose and passion — and unforgettable memories.
As we reflect on yet another successful Earth Day, we’d like to extend waves of gratitude to everyone who made this special day possible:
- 2025 sponsors
- PBC members
- Emcees and DJ
- Booth staff and volunteers
- Local schools
- Each and every volunteer
Earth Day of Action Results
From Daly City to Half Moon Bay and across the peninsula to Foster City, Earth Heroes of all ages showed up in stewardship of our planet. The morning kicked off with various beach, street, and stream cleanups and habitat restoration projects. Many sites were attended by local companies, including GCI General Contractors, See’s Candies, Truebeck Construction, and others; and groups such as the Boy Scouts of America and the Girl Scouts.
The smiles we saw throughout the day were contagious. Despite an unpredictable weather forecast, participants pitched in to do their part to clean, protect, and restore the coast and beyond.
Collectively, 1,316 volunteers generated the following impressive results as of May 11, 2025 across 31 reported sites:
- 2,015 pounds of landfill trash
- 210 pounds of recyclables
- 10,980 cigarette filters
- 8,160 pounds of green waste (weeds)
- 700 square yards mulched
- 25 native plants planted
PelicanFest Recap
The day continued at PelicanFest where climate advocates, community organizations, elected officials, and environmental experts descended on Linda Mar State Beach in Pacifica to educate and inspire nearly 6,000 attendees. This year’s annual festival highlighted the California Brown Pelican, our 2025 Earth Honoree.
With our majestic feathered friend at the forefront, attendees made pelican art and poetry, built life-sized pelican nests out of sticks, admired inventive beach trash art, and took silly photographs with our costumed pelican.
Awards & Recognitions
In addition to the day’s activities, the 1-hour programming honored special guests, senior class PBC Teen Site Captains, and our fearless leader Lynn Adams. The speeches and award recognitions evoked many happy tears among the audience and members of our volunteer-led organization.
An unsuspecting Adams received the following awards and recognitions for her unwavering commitment to the Pacific Beach Coalition and community:
- A Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition presented by Sam Liccardo
- A Commendation from the Board of Supervisors of San Mateo County
- A Resolution from the North County Water District
- A Resolution from the California Legislature presented by Josh Becker
- A Resolution from the City of Pacifica
Contributions to PBC
While we can’t put a price on the experiences had by those who joined us, we’re truly grateful for the $2,434 in donations raised in a few short hours. These contributions have been counted toward our Coastside Gives campaign and ultimately to support our programs, including:
- Growing our Naturalist program, which brings ocean education to life at our monthly events
- Reaching and inspiring more young students at local school assemblies
- Increasing training and leadership opportunities for volunteer Teen Site Captains
- Purchasing native plants for restoration projects
- Recruiting and engaging new volunteers to become Earth Heroes
- Educating more people about climate change and inspire them to act
Bart Selby
Ace pelican spotter Bart Selby was on site at the International Bird Rescue booth sharing his stories about the brown pelicans he’s come to know and admire over the years.
“‘Salty’ is the oldest-known California brown pelican in this range and is 25 years old. I’ve seen that bird about 50 times. We put bands on pelicans so we can track individuals, and I’ve seen some of these birds 200 times.” – Bart Selby
Beach Trash Art
For more than 20 years, John Vonderlin has returned to a cove one thousand times and encountered about 500 productive collecting events. He would fully document the beach conditions in the cove when a regurgitation event had occurred. His initial interest was scientific, leading him to research the dynamics of this “most unique” phenomenon. Taking the treasures and debris home, he would photograph them all, before and after sorting, and then store them in banker boxes. At some point, he began creating artplay pieces with the objects.
Vonderlin estimates that he has selected from nearly 100,000 objects to use as art supplies and brings his eye-catching art to display at PBC’s annual EcoFest events.
Site Highlights
Edgemar Park Cleanup
The tanbark looked great, so we didn’t have much weeding to do. Volunteers found two leftover plastic Easter eggs, and the kids had a great time weeding with the adults.
Pillar Point Harbor
Volunteers experienced the ocean, the sky, the sand, the air — all of it on full display with its magnificent beauty! We had some very dedicated Lovers of Nature out to clean up the beaches.
Thank you to Harbor Patrol, Melinda, Julie W. (Naturalist), Charlotte, Zoe, Maggie, Nathan, and our new potential Teen Site Captain Abraham.
Rockaway Beach Cleanup
We had a wonderful group of 24 volunteers on what turned out to be another lovely Saturday – the tide was in, but the surf was gentle, the winds were calm, and the sun was out. The ground squirrels were putting on a show, and several of our volunteers were pleased to point out flocks of our earth honoree soaring past as they picked up their buckets.
Several volunteers related that they had picked up a lot of stuff out of the storm drains. Two intrepid Earth Heroes came back with a squeaky dog toy, a comb, and some plastic vines. The Earth Hero of the day was a little boy named Jack, who came to help out with his Dad (Scott), and cleaned up a big pile of glitter from a party-popper.
Mussel Rock Habitat Restoration
Daly City workers showed up with seven volunteers to clear 300 pounds of wild radish plants and also brought drums of water for the newly planted native plants. Volunteers Helen dug up some thistles, and Myrna worked very hard to make this possible.
Get Involved
Earth Day is every day so Keep the momentum going. We host 10 cleanups and three habitat restorations every month. Find one near you or host your own Street to Beach Cleanup.
The Pacific Beach Coalition is located on the traditional land of the Ramaytush Ohlone people, past and present.