Work and Life in a Rural Setting “Must be nice,” I hear from different people in cities when I tell them I work in the heart of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The natural beauty, the serenity, the peacefulness, all must be nice they say. Yet it is hard not to note that the population of […]
A wilderness crew from the Sierra Institute will assist with manual fuels reduction activities on Flatiron Ridge in Lassen Volcanic National Park through September.
A feature of working with community members at the Sierra Institute is passion. People, rightly, care a lot about what happens in the natural world just outside their doors. They get passionate, to a point that someone walking into a community meeting might sometimes think we aren’t debating but in conflict. Yet the reality is […]
On November 15th, Kyle and I attended a meeting of the Yosemite Stanislaus Solutions (YSS) collaborative group in Sonora, California. It includes a diverse array of stakeholders, such as representatives from Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, Sierra Pacific Industries, Friends of Berkeley Tuolumne Camp, the Tuolumne Group of the Sierra Club, and encompasses much of […]
In recent years, California has been experiencing an increase in large fires due to a combination of factors, including drought conditions and a history of fire suppression. We saw this trend continue this summer with the Carr and Mendocino Complex Fires and even more recently this November with the Camp Fire. Fires tend to disproportionately […]
When driving north on highway 89 toward Burney, looking out at miles of charred hills and dead trees that make up what is now the footprint of the Eiler Fire, you likely question if and how the forest might recover from such a severe burn. The Eiler Fire burned 32,416 acres of the Lassen National […]
Last month I attended a meeting of the Burney-Hat Creek Community Forest and Watershed Group (BHCCFWG, or BHC for short). It was held at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, a small building and an array of telescope dishes arranged seemingly haphazardly in the valley. The skeletons of burned trees on the surrounding mountains barely visible […]
Last month, Lauren and I attended the International Symposium on Society and Natural Resource Management (ISSRM) in Utah, where we presented preliminary findings from our research with the California Department of Conservation (DOC) on the Statewide Watershed Program. ISSRM is an annual gathering of professionals and students working at the intersection of social science and […]
Today we are at the East side of Jewel Lake. It is fairly cold and windy today but we are building a camp fire. It is nice to hear the wind through the trees and the birds chirping. I tried to go fishing this morning but the fish weren’t biting.. Other than that, it feels […]
I am part of the trail maintenance crew at P-CREW. Our crew, The Cariboots, is split into two groups: trail maintenance, and cross-cut. The trail maintenance group does brush and tread work, which involves removing manzanita brush and redefining trails. A day in P-CREW look like this; going to the cash (the place we hid […]
