The Sierra Institute is entering the blogospere.
After years of sharing what we’re doing by posting a document or an update to our website, were launching a blog movement at the Institute. OK, calling it a movement might be a bit of an overstatement, but we’re jumping into the blog world in a significant way. The Sierra Institute is launching blogs for three projects, as well as this more general one that addresses what the Sierra Institute has been working on for the last 17 years: maintaining healthy environments and thriving rural communities.
We’re launching blogs as a way to offer more timely updates about our work. Perhaps most importantly, however, the blogs offer a way to share information and engage you, project stakeholders and general readers alike.
We hope the blogs will stimulate comments about the projects, as well as serve as a way to exchange ideas, and even challenge what we’re doing or thinking. We’re looking forward to our blogs engaging project stakeholders and becoming a public exchange of ideas, an on-line community meeting, if you will. At the same time, we’re hoping the blogs stimulate others to comment, particularly those of you who are thinking about or working on similar issues, thereby informing our projects and, perhaps, informing work elsewhere, as well.
One thing I do know, the more publicly we discuss rural issues, and the relationship between sustainable forests and watersheds with viable and vibrant rural communities, the better. While rural “market share” may be small, communities and their role in stewarding the natural resources around them need more not less visibility. The connection between rural community economic health and well-being with a healthy environment has long been misunderstood. Whether it’s the forest or watershed sustainability, population decline and economically hard hit rural communities, or the importance of open space and good stewardship, we need thoughtful conversation and even a movement around these issues more than ever.
Project blogs we’re launching include:
- Where the Trout Chill Out (Lake Almanor Basin)
- Community Forest for Burney Creek and Hat Creek (community and environment issues in the Burney Creek and Hat Creek Watersheds)
- Just for the Health of It (rural health issues for Plumas County, California)
- Rethinking Community and Environment (this blog)
Where the Trout Chill Out
Where the Trout Chill Out focuses on the Lake Almanor Basin, highlighting an area we’ve been working in for eight years, bringing a community group together and helping them develop a plan for management of a mixed-ownership watershed. It’s not just any watershed; it encompasses a 1.2 million acre foot reservoir that sits just above the California Water Project and a series of hydropower dams and conveyance facilities that produce 2.5 percent of California’s power, and water that ultimately is spread on the fields flows out of taps in Southern California.
Community Forestry for Burney Creek and Hat Creek
Community Forestry for Burney Creek and Hat Creek focuses on our Burney Creek and Hat Creek project, another mixed ownership area stretching from the peak of Mt. Lassen north to where the snowmelt and spring water flows in the two creeks and join the Pitt River. The Shasta County Resource Advisory Committee and the Fall River Resource Conservation District asked the Sierra Institute to help them think about and implement a landscape-level management project that address forest health and community socioeconomic health.
Just for the Health of It
The third project blog, Just for the Health of It, focuses on one of our newest and novel projects, healthcare in Plumas County. We’re working to improve the health and healthcare of children and their families in our local county. Our project starts in the schools and uses telecommunications equipment when it can help with needed services. Project goals include improving healthcare delivery to children and their families, improving the fiscal bottom line for local healthcare facilities through increased patient use and enrollment in support programs, and improving student performance in schools.
There is much more to say about these exciting projects, but I refer you to the project blogs for more information.
Rethinking Community and Environment
Let me offer one last word on this, the Sierra Institute’s more general blog. I look forward to writing about and engaging readers in current rural community and natural resource management issues, one example being the challenges we’re facing with our work advancing payment for natural resource services. We’ll also discuss projects we’re working on that don’t have their own blogs, such as measuring and monitoring the socioeconomic health of rural communities. Like our other blogs, we may invite a guest blogger, or we’ll kick off a discussion of an issue that has taken center stage in our local, regional, or national work.
We may range a bit on the issues we cover, but we’ll stay true to the Sierra Institute’s mission, which is to maintain the health forests and watersheds by investing in the well-being of rural communities and strengthening their participation in natural resource decisions and programs. While the launch of blogs is a new step for us, blog posts will not be the only way we share our project work. We’ll continue to post project reports, newsletters, and other happenings at the Sierra Institute on our website.
Finally, since the Sierra Institute’s entry into the blogosphere is new, we hope you’ll let us know how we’re doing, as well as ways to make our blogs better. We view blogs as a way to inform, and, as importantly, advancing one of the pillars of our organization: to work in cooperation, collaboration, and partnership with rural communities to develop programs and policies that advance their well-being while also advancing sound environmental practices.
Thank you for your interest in our work. I look forward to your involvement in our blogs!
Jonathan Kusel
Executive Director, Sierra Institute