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 […]
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 […]
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.
First steps in managing an invasive aquatic pathogen in the Feather River Basin
I arrived at Indian Valley in January this year for a year-long fellowship developed through a partnership between the Sierra Institute for Community and Environment and the Feather River Chapter of Trout Unlimited. One major component of the project and, admittedly, the one which first captured my attention, is an aquatic survey and the formulation […]
Watershed Program Study officially released by the California Department of Conservation
The final report can be found here. Watershed coordinators are key to watershed health. In fact, they have generated seven times the funds state agencies have invested in them. Those are among the findings of an in-depth report two years in the making by Sierra Institute for Community and Environment. “Wading through the Watershed Program” […]
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 […]
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 […]
Freshwater “bug” ID with students
Micah Silver has served as our Aquatic Field Fellow in 2018. As part of his work, he brought some of his skills into the Natural Resource classroom at Greenville High School. Read more below about his experience. We are all familiar with fresh bodies of water such as rivers, creeks, lakes and ponds. Here in […]