Preserving Wild Spaces - My work in video format

very nice, beautiful country. great work F8L!

 

my sis in law and nephews live in sacramento. they spend a lot of time around the american river. we're hoping to get out there this fall and spend some time seeing northern california. havn't been since i was a kid other than l.a. and san diego.

 

Hope you are doing well with treatment F8L.

 

Sailing cures everything... esp an overstuffed wallet!

 

It's nice to follow your work, Justin. That's a beautiful piece of property and with the watershed, I can see why this is a priority for protection.

The land looks like it's in nice condition. Is this from grazing, does he burn it or does he actually mow all of that?!

When you say you are "trying" to preserve the land, are you encountering obstacles and what are they? I thought this type of land acquisition is an easy feat if you have two willing parties....the Trust and the land donor.

 

You may LOVE your job but I'm JEALOUS of it!!!

I did understand the contiguous nature from one of the links you provided. I could see that this land would connect other protected parcels. It's great when fragmented land gets put back together once again.

I know that this depends on the land owner's priorities but is there a way to work it where he donates the land, places a conservation easement on it with an underlying management plan and then receives a tax break for the contribution? This may be a win/win for all involved.

If there's a way to quantify local tourism revenue expected from the acquisition, maybe the local business owners (or the County, who is hopefully not broke) would contribute to the cause.

Or maybe you could lease some of the land back to the current owner for grazing purposes and offset some of the purchase price.

For stewardship cause, maybe there are some matching grants you can tap.

I'm sure the Trust thought of all this and the current "purchase" goal is the last remaining viable option, eh?

I hope you get what you want out of this deal....seems daunting but you've overcome much greater odds, for sure. It's nice to see you out and about and engaging in life!

 

Visit? - I'd love to but cannot take any vacations due to a sick pet requiring daily meds. CA is on our list but I reeeeeally want to get to Oregon first. Been wanting to do this for years so you have to wait a bit.

I forgot to ask about the US F&W. Didn't you say the dogface is endangered and can't they be of use to you if this butterfly is found at the purchase site?

Good luck in pursuit of your land purchase. We donate to our local land conservancy annually but maybe we can consider Placer at year end for this too.

 

They're pretty close together.

If you're going to travel all that way, you may as well see both while you're there. The coast, at least.

 

Did you just learn that from your visit there?

 

No, I remembered that from my first visit, a cycling trip down the coast. The dunes, the redwoods, and highway 1 in Cali were the best parts.

 

You're in tip top shape, I gather. That sounds like it's not easy. I saw the redwoods when I was young. Out of all our annual driving trips, the redwoods are ingrained in my memory.

 

Justin,

Here are pics from our creek project I told you about. I don't have a "before" pic as the engineer didn't contact me prior to starting work. Our creek was channelized and had a monoculture of reed canary grass. Here's our progress as of last weekend. There's a lot of stuff in here that's growing but is too immature to set bloom....silphium, lobelia (2 kinds), chelone, penstemon, betony, iris, lilly, etc.

We've been hand wicking the rcg with rodeo and so far so good. Many, many back breaking hours as our land neighbor really likes his rcg and won't kill it (he actually needles me about our "project") so his seed bank gets on our site.







The creek is evolving as he planned, that is to say it is now acting more like a swale. The main creek has now branched into a second creek and it's creating mini islands. There's a third channel forming for times when the water volume is very high. During abundant rains the entire area is flooded. This, my neighbor like as he said that before restoration, my creek would flood his property.

I saw water hemlock in bloom that we didn't seed in but I subsequently learned that there's an alien of this plant. I have to go back to check which one decided to pop in for a visit.

 

Twenty years ago, yeah. Now I'm mostly just skinny.

Pulling weeds by hand definitely feels like work. Gotta be tough not to give in to using poison - good for you.

 

Unfortunately, I have to use chemicals. One could never get rid of Reed Canary
Grass by hand pulling. I use a chemical glove with a cotton glove over it to apply the chemical on the target only. This uses about 75% less chemical for the same surface area. As the site matures, the rcg will require less maintenance to keep in check (at least I have to hope).