Living with Fire
Forest Health and Fire Resources Program Update
Southern Humboldt Forest Health and Wildfire Resilience Project The Trees Foundation Forest Health and Fire Resources Program has been hard at work in 2024. We began the year collaborating with project partners California State Parks, Humboldt Redwood Company, Briceland Fire, Elk Ridge Forestry, Eel River Wailaki (ERW), Native Health in Native Hands (NHNH), and numerous…
Read MoreNative Health in Native Hands, Organizing for a Changing World
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 MoreLittle Things Matter Most: Preparing Your Home for Embers from Wildfires
The Next Step in Maintaining Defensible Space By Mitchell Danforth, Community Fire Resources Coordinator,Trees Foundation Summer is here, and as we all know, so is wildfire season. Often wildfires are depicted as an indomitable force that sweeps across the landscape, leveling all in its path like a lava flow, and the homes left standing are…
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Prescribed Fire:
An Indigenous Perspective
By Margo Robbins, Cultural Fire Management Council The following is a transcript of the talk given by Margo Robbins during a webinar hosted by Trees Foundation on Oct. 3rd, 2021 titled “Pathways to Fire Resilience.” She refers to some photos from her slideshow that don’t appear here, but you may watch her full presentation with…
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The Buckeye Ridge Prescribed Fire:
A Nonprofit’s Perspective
By Ali Freedlund, Mattole Restoration Council Charged into the marrow of my life is how I felt participating in the Stansberry Ranch’s 109-acre prescribed burn that occurred in February just outside Honeydew, California. The Buckeye Ridge burn was supposed to happen in the fall of 2020, but the river was the force that prevented it.…
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The Oak Knoll Prescribed Fire:
A Landowner’s Perspective
By Mitchell Danforth Wildfires represent the single greatest threat to most of our inland communities, especially in recent times, as fires have grown in size, intensity, and damage to people and property. It is critical to acknowledge that fires are not good or evil, they simply are—and like floods, landslides, snowstorms, and earthquakes, how we…
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The Old Briceland Ridge Prescribed Fire:
An Ecological Field Observer’s Perspective
By Kyle Keegan Ecological Restoration Is Not a Race: Lessons from Western Pond Turtle It was a 70-degree afternoon in February 2022 on Old Briceland Ridge: 1,960 feet of elevation amidst stands of Douglas-fir, scattered Tanoak, and Chinquapin. Winds were light out of the southwest, and relative humidities were in the high 40s. Fire had…
Read MoreAncient Eel River
Whale song interrupted by tectonic collisions. Crushing pressure of oceanic plates giving birth to a new land; accretion and incision; upthrusted matrix of igneous, submarine and metamorphic rocks: sandstone, siltstone, mudstone, clay. Earth, Air, Water, Fire. Green serpent, a temperate rainforest organism unfurled, grasping boundaries of Pacific coastlines. Outstretched arms of ancients holding sky-gardens of…
Read MoreA New Hope: The Northern Mendocino Ecosystem Recovery Alliance
Trees Foundation is thrilled to welcome Northern Mendocino Ecosystem Recovery Alliance (NM-ERA) into our Fiscal Sponsorship umbrella. Fiscal Sponsorship is one of the primary ways that Trees Foundation supports the North Coast grassroots environmental community. It allows groups to move swiftly forward in accomplishing their objectives, while we handle the 501(c)3 bookkeeping and financial reporting…
Read MoreRestoring Fire Resilience in the Mattole River Headwaters
Sanctuary Forest By Ash Brookens, Tasha McKee, and April Newlander Sanctuary Forest (SFI) holds title to more than 800 acres of forestland in the Mattole River headwaters. The group is committed to stewardship practices that will reduce wildfire risk and promote forest health, as well as improve streamflows and riparian habitat. In February 2022, SFI…
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