I curated and created all storytelling for River News, Tuolumne River Trust’s collection of features and impact stories. I collaborated with program and development teams to identify and amplify newsworthy stories aligned with donor and audience interests. These appeared in TRT’s River News blog, member magazines, and impact reports. As a one-person media production unit, I created and edited all writing, photography, and videography seen within River News features.
Newsworthy Features:
Rocks, Riffles & Floodplains: Restoration Creates Salmon Habitat on the Tuolumne
“From 1848 through the 1950s, gold and gravel mining changed the makeup of the Tuolumne River in a flash, and salmon suffered habitat loss that affected the ecological web throughout the entire watershed. The river is now quiet of salmon, whose numbers have dwindled to less than 1% of their historical numbers.”
How Fishing and Play Build Resilience Along the Tuolumne: An Interview with Victor Martinez
“If the kids get tagged out of the salmon life cycle game, they don’t like it, and you can tell they’re visibly upset. But then we remind them, “hey, you’re a salmon, you have to work hard to survive.”
The Fight for Fish & Flows: TRT Organizes Around New Instream Flow Plan
“I have seen fall-run Chinook in the Lumsden Reach of the Tuolumne many times. They come up from Don Pedro Reservoir, which acts as their ocean since they can no longer reach the Pacific,” shares Cindy Charles, a longtime TRT supporter turned Board Member.
Cindy regularly fishes the Tuolumne’s waters and knows that higher flows mean life. Like the migrating fish, she calls the Tuolumne watershed home, too.”
Stream Work: People-Powered Restoration Returns Water to Boney Flat Meadow
“Wetland meadows are thought to act as sponges, like firebreaks dotting fire-prone lands. Common sense adds up: you can’t burn a wet sponge, and TRT is committed to restoring wet meadows in the Sierra Nevada to slow the spread of catastrophic megafires, protect diverse and unique habitats, provide refuge for sensitive wildlife, and adapt to regional climate change projections.”
From Protection to Resilience: How Collaborative Stewardship Transformed Forests this Year
“Driving down a muddy forest road, Madelyn and Ande, Forest Health Project Managers at TRT, point out a section of forest that TRT prepared for a prescribed burn last year. To the right are tall stands of conifers, gently seasoned black but thriving, with clear and open ground around them. Further down the road is a forest so dense it’s like a wall—a combustible fuel ladder, ready to move a small ground fire into a canopy-level megafire in a flash.”
Healthy Forests Create Watershed-Wide Resilience: An Interview with Madelyn Guillaume
“Change is going to happen, and we can’t just shelter our forest from that. We need to create a landscape that is adaptable and resilient to the changes we know are coming. It’s not an if; it’s a when, and it’s looking more and more soon than previously understood.”
Impact Stories
I conducted interviews and wrote person-centered impact stories for Tuolumne River Trust’s 2024 Impact Report. I also co-designed and wrote select articles for the State of Parks member magazine. Here is a selection.
