By Kyle Rodgers and Noah Abramson The Dixie Fire burned hot through several communities, reducing homes, businesses, and everything in between to piles of burned rubble. It is hard to reflect on positive fire effects when so much was lost, but looking across the landscape there are some hints of hope among the smoke. Our […]
Sierra Institute Blogs
RISE-ing Up To The Challenge
By Lauren Redmore and Zoe Watson The timber industry decline that led to mill closures in the 1990s left many rural forested communities in California without an economic base, driving out many families in search of economic opportunity. Those who stayed behind still lack family supporting employment opportunities. As timber processing capability plummeted before stabilizing […]
Youth Support Wildland Urban Interface Fuels Reduction Efforts in Butterfly Valley
Last summer, in 2020, the Sierra Institute for Community & Environment youth crew, Plumas Conservation Restoration and Education in Watersheds (P-CREW) worked in Butterfly Valley, CA. This 500-acre valley is managed by the Plumas National Forest and is home to the Butterfly Botanical Area which was designated in 1976 as a protected area due to […]
Earth Day Reflections by Spencer Lachman
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 […]
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 […]