Read the Case Studies

“Today the Central Valley is a highly engineered landscape, controlled by rigid systems of irrigation, drains, dams, and levees. The cost of this human-controlled design is the loss of 95% of wetlands, floodplain forests, and the food chain energy they produce. It is expensive to operate this way …”

“The connections in this meadow weave together the past and the present, and they revolve around food—food for birds, butterflies, and people. In a blink of time, we can see the meadow: a thriving zone of biodiversity and habitat as well as a place of abundant food stores—in the form of a Camas bulb gathering ground called Ti’nth (as noted by Latgawa elders); then land taken by white settlers for grazing cattle; and today an environmental nonprofit working back to the spirit of connectivity that is imbued in this land. …”

“Starting at the Pacific Ocean and weaving along a 44-mile stretch of Northern California’s Klamath River is the Yurok Reservation and ancestral lands. A group of Yurok citizens works together to bring fire back to this ecosystem. The Cultural Fire Management Council’s mission is to further the use of fire as a means of cultural resource and land management. This region of California evolved with fire and prescribed seasonal burning—forms of knowledge and stewardship that were all but wiped out with colonial efforts at fire suppression … “

Habitat Everywhere is an in-process guidebook created by Greenhorns, produced for landowners and landworkers. The book offers basic restoration ecology principles and inspirational case studies about habitat creation and stewardship initiatives. This friendly guidebook seeks to inspire new landowners into action, empowering them to foster biodiversity and habitat health on their lands.

Here, I contributed to three case studies that featured insights from the Nigiri Project/California Trout, Vesper Meadow Education Program, and regional prescribed burn associations in California.