Addressing Community Needs through environmental stewardship

In the age of information, it is easy to assume that everyone can conveniently access and react to knowledge relevant to our lives. Our phones light up with flash flood warnings, letting us know to stay indoors. Drivers receive traffic updates and make route changes accordingly. Friends from across the world check in with us about local happenings in our neighborhoods. On the other hand, there is information that isn’t easily accessed or acted upon by those who need it. Imag

Serving as a Grizzly Corps Fellow has been an educational homecoming. I was born and raised in the Bay Area and have recently moved back out West after several years on the East Coast. Being back here - and working in environmental restoration -has shown me there is so much more to know about California and the communities and ecosystems I hold dear. I am serving at Sustainable Conservation – a nonprofit focused on advancing the stewardship of California’s ecosystems and na

The world around me takes the clearest shape when I am on the back of a horse. It is through the viewfinder of a horse’s ears that I begin to make sense of new experiences, ask questions, and build community where I feel the pull of contention. Four years ago, I took the saying “put yourself in someone else’s shoes” a bit too literally and traded my Doc Martens for cowboy boots to work as a wrangler in rural New Mexico. Since then, I have oscillated between life as a student

Photos taken by Renata Urbina De la Flor I would like to reserve this first sentence to recognize the land I now live on, and the indigenous peoples that have cared for her to this day; the Tolowa, Shasta, Karok, Yurok, Hupa, Whilikut, Chilula, Chimariko, and Wiyot tribes. I invite you to read more on California Indian History . It’s about a ten-minute walk from downtown Arcata to the edge of a 2,350-acre second-growth redwood forest. (City Forests. City of Arcata, https://ww

Since I moved four hours further north to serve as a GrizzlyCorps Fellow in Siskiyou County, the days have been getting shorter at an alarming rate. Although GrizzlyCorps serves California, I’m so far north, it’s almost Oregon. Most Californians consider the Bay Area “NorCal,” which leads to this region to being called the “Far North” (which sounds like we’re in Game of Thrones) or the “REAL north state” (which is a direct quote from an email welcoming me here). Many people h

In my first year at Blue Oak Ranch Reserve, I learned so much about working at a field station in the oak woodlands/savanna. As I now enter my second year at Blue Oak Ranch Reserve, I’m anticipating exciting adventures and new experiences. With my current experience, I feel prepared to tackle the projects for the upcoming service year. Collecting seeds from Elymus elymoides during the summer for our grass seeds collection Who would have thought a dude from San Jose would get

The first thing I noticed when I moved to California was the light, how it sharpens the edges of everything, from orchard rows to mountain silhouettes, to the redwoods. The landscape feels alive in a different register: drier, more exposed, constantly reminding you of what it gives and what it withholds. For someone who grew up in Appalachia, surrounded by a different terrain, California feels both foreign and familiar. It’s a place that asks for attention; and rewards it wit

By Marielle Fehrenbacher When I began my service year in September, I had five summers of experience working in regenerative agriculture and was intimately familiar with small scale agricultural settings. However, my experience was limited to Oregon’s Willamette Valley, always focused on harvesting and processing the summer bounty. I was familiar with tomatoes in the summertime, how to prune and trellis and harvest at perfect ripeness. My memories of farming were of abundance

California’s Central Coast isn’t just golden sunsets and perfect surf. Beneath the rolling hills and coastal fog lies a hardworking...

by Brianna Brockman Wildfires in California have been a hot topic for many years across the country, but perhaps never as much so as they...