The Annual Salmonid Restoration Conference, March 2024

The Garcia River tour, at the SRF Conference, will visit habitat enhancement sites in the Garcia River estuary. Photo courtesy The Nature Conservancy Test

Holding Space: Creating Habitat and a Platform for Innovation Salmonid Restoration Federation Salmonid Restoration Federation (SRF) produces the largest salmon restoration conference in California, convening a diverse range of people in the watershed restoration field including planners, engineers, policy makers, students, Watershed Stewards Program members, consultants, academics, tribal members, on-the-ground practitioners, and landowners. It is…

Read More

South Fork Eel River 2023 Pikeminnow Survey Provides Encouraging Results

UCB divers after lunch on Day 2 (l to r): Phil Georgakakos, Gabe Rossi, Jim Greenberg, and Rachael Hein. All photos this article by Pat Higgins

By Pat Higgins, Managing Director, Eel River Recovery Project The Eel River Recovery Project (ERRP) conducted its eighth annual survey of invasive Sacramento pikeminnow on the South Fork Eel River from Rattlesnake Creek to Standish Hickey State Park on June 28 and 29, and results were surprising. The invasive pikeminnow population was far lower than…

Read More

Southern Humboldt Fire Safe Council: Part of the Web of Groups Working Together to Rebuild Our Relationship to Fire

The October 19 cultural fire burn at the Southern Humboldt Community Park—the first Cultural Burn in southern Humboldt in over 150 years—is a great example of southern Humboldt collaboration in action. Collaborators included Eel River Wailaki, Native Health in Native Hands, Wailaki Cultural Fire Crew, Trees Foundation, Briceland VFD, Garberville VFD, Humboldt County Prescribed Burn Association, Southern Humboldt Community Park, and local volunteers. The burn was conducted where a natural Hazel Grove lives. The hazel, or lachindé in Wailaki, is an important basket-making material and provides healthy nuts for animals and people. The hazel has been managed for many thousands of years till recently and now is not producing nuts and the stems of the bush are not able to be used for baskets or other uses without being maintained with fire and pruning. Photo by Kai Ostrow

Submitted by Gail Eastwood, Chair, Southern Humboldt Fire Safe Council If you watch busy ants around an anthill for a while, you’ll see many ants industriously moving a bit of grain or chaff or something. It appears to be part of a coordinated effort to achieve some mutual goal. But where is the commander? Who’s…

Read More

If You Build It, Will Coho Run? Marshall Ranch Ponds Constructed to Maintain Redwood Creek Summer Flows

Joel Monschke (Stillwater Sciences Senior Engineer and Technical Lead), Elizabeth Marshall Maybee (landowner), and Logan Edwards (Edwards Excavation) from left to right at the lower pond site. Photo by David Sanchez (General Manager of the Marshall Ranch)

By Dana Stolzman, Executive Director, Salmonid Restoration Federation The Build Up Coho salmon persist in scattered watersheds throughout the North Coast of California, especially in forested tributaries that provide habitat refugia. Redwood Creek is a rare example of a human-populated watershed that still retains intrinsic potential for coho salmon recovery. For over 10 years, the…

Read More

Institute for Sustainable Forestry: A Brief Retrospective, Current Update on Projects, and Looking Ahead

ISFers at beginning of The New Forestry Trail at the Southern Humboldt Community Park. From left: Jesse Hill, Nonae Sears, Kathryn Lobato, Gray Shaw, Greg Condon, Liz Harwood, Chip Tittmann, Richard Gienger, and Tim Metz. Photo by Chip Tittmann

Submitted by Chip Tittmann, President; Greg Condon, Treasurer; Gray Shaw, Secretary; and Board Directors Richard Gienger, Jeff Hedin, Liz Harwood, and Connie Smyser Over the last 39 years, ISF has built a legacy of promoting forest health, forest protection, and sustainable forest products utilization in NW California, all while collaborating with local NGOs, Tribes, and public…

Read More

SPAWN Nursery: The Power of Community Over 20 Years of Propagating Native Plants

Nursery Volunteer Crew at Propagation Bench, December 2022

By Audrey Fusco, Nursery Manager and Restoration Ecologist, Salmon Protection and Watershed Network The SPAWN restoration nursery, seaturtles.org/nursery, grew out of the desire to restore creek habitat for coho salmon by utilizing local genetic stock of native plants that were not available in any nursery. Beginning as a volunteer effort, we sought experts to mentor…

Read More

Native Health in Native Hands, Organizing for a Changing World

Round Valley Feather Dancers at the Mateel Community Center on February 18, 2023, with Diana Totten, Cultural Fire Advisor, in the background. Photo by James Ficklin-Wood

By Serenity Wood During this era of ecological crisis, how do we return more stewardship of the land to Indigenous peoples? Tribal cultural revitalization and environmental protection efforts are working towards this goal in Southern Humboldt through Native Health in Native Hands. “Awareness, love, compassion, and gratitude is what we are all feeling as we…

Read More

Keeping Timber Harvests Out of Jackson State Forest

Photo by Jon Klein

Over the last three years, coordinated community action has successfully stopped a number of timber harvest plans (THPs) in Jackson—California’s largest state forest. Two of the blocked THPs had been submitted, one was approved and sold to a mill, and others were under development. The total area saved by the work of the Coalition to…

Read More

The Virtues and Limits of Collaboration

Inside the PFPD Fire Station Photo by Larry Casteel

Piercy Volunteer Fire Department By Jeffrey Hedin, Commissioner, Piercy Fire Protection District “Cooperation, Collaboration, and Communication;” add Coordination and it’s a perfect title for a report from Piercy. I first heard enviro activists promoting collaboration during a North Coast Resource Partnership (NCRP) conference at the Bear River Tribe’s Community Center in Loleta, CA. The presenters…

Read More