To me, Earth Day is an opportunity to reflect on our individual relationships to global systems. The adage goes, “Think globally and act locally”, suggesting we should consider the broader implications of our actions on our global community and the intentionality of the decisions we make as consumers, humans, and Americans. To understand these identities […]
Sierra Institute Blogs
Native Plant Propagation: A New Collaborative and a Novice Horticulturist
I’ve never thought of myself as a gardener and especially not as a native plant horticulturist; however, as I came in as an Americorps Volunteer with the Sierra Institute this is exactly the role I took on for one of the many projects that were waiting for me. This role I find myself in is […]
Who Cares about Forest Roads?
By Virginia Pritchard Virginia started working at the Sierra Institute in the Fall of 2020 as a Collaborative Forestry Management Apprentice and will be working on West Lassen Headwaters Infrastructure Assessment and Watershed Improvement Project. She graduated from Oregon State University in 2016 with a dual B.S. in Environmental Science and Microbiology with a Chemistry […]
Harnessing Your Independence
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 […]
Lassen Volcanic National Park News Release
A wilderness crew from the Sierra Institute will assist with manual fuels reduction activities on Flatiron Ridge in Lassen Volcanic National Park through September.
The Way of the Future
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 […]
Collaborative forest restoration: one response to wildfire
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 […]
Exploring socioeconomic effects of fire in Amador and Calaveras Counties
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 […]
Landscape level management options for the Baker Cypress
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 […]
Learning About Forest Collaboratives
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 […]