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 […]
Sierra Institute Blog
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 […]
The Restoration of Montane Meadows and Forests in the Northern Sierra Nevada
By Spencer Lachman Collaborative Forestry Management Apprentice Degraded conditions within the forests and meadows of the northern Sierra Nevada pose complex challenges to land managers looking to prioritize ecosystem health. Historically, these ecosystems were controlled by natural disturbances, but human intervention has changed the severity and frequency of these events. In ecology a disturbance is […]
Sierra Institute and the Maidu Summit Consortium partner on landscape treatments on the West Shore of Lake Almanor.
By Spencer Lachman, Collaborative Forestry Management Apprentice On a recent, brisk October morning, members of the Maidu Summit Consortium, the Sierra Institute, and the US Forest Service gathered just west of Lake Almanor on property recently returned to the Mountain Maidu community. After socially distant introductions, the group gathered around a large sugar pine and […]
Connecting During COVID-19
As seen in many other workplaces, March 2020 resulted in the adoption of an unusual environment at the Sierra Institute – working remotely during a global pandemic. On March 16th, in the middle of a late season blizzard, we jumped on the phone lines for our (usually in-person) weekly staff meeting, where we discussed closing […]
Conditions for Collaboration: A New Apprentice’s First Impressions
Before arriving in Taylorsville, I thought I knew what to expect. I had lived in a few small towns and traveled through many others. But in the northeastern Sierra, I found a character all its own. On chilly early morning walks, pouncing pumas are a primary concern. On twilight drives, it’s rare to see fewer […]
Harnessing the Power of Hazardous Trees:
How one rural community is utilizing fuels reduction activities and a biomass boiler to increase the pace of forest restoration and promote socioeconomic development. What if I told you the same “hazardous fuels” contributing to California’s catastrophic wildfires may also be one of the state’s largest climate-smart renewable energy resources? Over the past decade, nearly […]
P-CREW reunion at Marin Headlands
During the summer, P-CREW crew members spend five weeks in the wilderness, working 8-hour days doing physical labor, backpacking, and living in close proximity with 11 other teenagers and two crew leaders. For many, it is their first time having a “real” job, camping, or going an extended period of time without access to the […]