Goals & Needs

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Project One

The Yolo County Resource Conservation District (YCRCD) is a special district recognized under state law and serves over 650,000 acres, including diverse agricultural operations, rangeland, public open space, and developed areas and municipalities. The YCRCD has accomplished a number of successes in improving water quality, addressing water conservation issues in urban and rural areas, preserving and restoring habitat, and developing new ways of achieving conservation goals. The mission of YCRCD is to protect, improve, and sustain the natural resources of Yolo County. The YCRCD uses a model of cooperation and voluntary action instead of regulation to solve complex local, regional, and statewide issues.

     The GrizzlyCorps Fellow would work with RCD staff to install and maintain restoration sites for pollinator and wildlife habitat. The work will be hands-on: about 70% in the field and 30% in the office. A typical day would likely start early: meet at the office and drive with RCD staff to a site and take care of the land. This work would be diverse and include tasks such as site preparation (mowing, disking, herbicide application), native plant installation, and maintenance of new and older sites (weed whacking, hand work, herbicide application). The YCRCD also works with partners on volunteer planting days, and an outdoor education program called The Student and Landowner Education and Watershed Stewardship (SLEWS) Program that teaches high school students hands-on restoration work. Our Fellow would be an essential part of planning and preparing for field days with students. Most importantly, the Fellow will serve as a mentor for high school students learning about on-farm climate beneficial practices such as planting native hedgerows and riparian buffers that sequester carbon and provide habitat. Office work would be managing a plant monitoring program.

    The Habitat Restoration Fellow will be addressing GHG reduction through promoting and implementing on-farm practices that sequester carbon. Additional benefits of climate beneficial practices include wildlife and pollinator habitat improvements, storm water water quality improvements, groundwater recharge, soil health improvements and erosion reduction.

    This work will increase resilience for California agricultural landscapes on irrigated and non-irrigated crop lands as well as private rangeland and public open space. The activities will focus on farm edges and wildlands in Yolo County and the Sacramento Valley and will help address the needs of our communities, and promote state goals for healthy soils, improved watersheds, and improving pollinator habitat.

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Project Two
The Yolo County Resource Conservation District (YCRCD) YCRCD is a special district recognized under state law and serves over 650,000 acres, including diverse agricultural operations, rangeland, public open space, and developed areas and municipalities. The mission of YCRCD is to protect, improve, and sustain the natural resources of Yolo County.     

Due to the increased frequency and intensity of fires in our county, the YCRCD applied for and received multiple grants for fire prevention planning. This work includes starting a Fire Safe Council, writing a Community Wildfire Protection Plan, starting a Prescribed Burn Association, and supporting local fuel reduction projects. 

A day in the life of our GrizzlyCorps Fellow will be a mix of field work, outreach and office work. Work in the office might be researching information for projects that are new and unfamiliar to the YCRCD such as chipper programs, address signage, and fuel reduction treatments. We are also starting a robust outreach and education program such as defensible space trainings and home hardening workshops, which require creating presentations. The field portion of the work will be on fuels reduction and burning. The Prescribed Burn Association will be starting in a few months and we will be purchasing equipment, reaching out to landowners and, in the winter, starting to do some small burns.

The Fire Prevention Planning Fellow will be addressing GHG reduction though promoting and implementing practices that reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire that release massive amounts of carbon and     
All this fire prevention planning work is being done to increase the resilience of our local our rural communities and work to prevent catastrophic wildfires which destroy homes, alter landscapes and release carbon.

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Capacity Building Projects

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Project One

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• Project 1: Yolo County Restoration Site Inventory and Mapping- The YCRCD and our partners have been installing habitat restoration projects around the county since the late 1990s, but we do not have an inventory or a map of these projects. An inventory and map of this work would increase capacity for outreach, education and grant writing.
   

• Project 2: Native plant monitoring/weed control tracking: The YCRCD installs and manages a variety of restoration projects and maintains established sites. Projects have a deliverable of a certain survival rate for plants, so we monitor for that. However, due to lack of capacity, we do not have a detailed plant monitoring program in place. We’d also like to better monitor and document the successes and failures of our weed control efforts to improve that essential part of restoration work. 
   

• Project 3: SLEWS Mentor:  Recent college graduates are excellent mentors for the SLEWS program as they relate well to the high school students, and can share their experience as college graduates with students who may be disadvantaged and who are considering applying to college. Our Fellow will serve as a mentor who leads small groups in hands-on restoration work. The SLEWS program is always in short supply of consistent, reliable, quality mentors, and the presence of e Fellow will improve the program.  It is also an excellent leadership opportunity.
   

• Project 4: YCRCD ArcGIS Database Management-The YCRCD has an active GIS program, using a desktop computer as well as hand-held devices in the field. This information needs to be managed and organized. This is an excellent opportunity for someone who wants to learn ArcGIS.
   

• Project 5: Optional Research project-In the fall of 2022, the YCRCD will be working on two big initiatives: installing a 25-acre riparian restoration project, and treating giant reed along 40+ miles of creeks and sloughs. Although these projects have already been planned out, the Fellow will have the opportunity to adopt an aspect of a project to do a small research project on, depending to their interest.

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Project Two

• Project 1: Prescribed Burn Association--The YCRCD has received funding from CALFIRE to start a PBA, which entails purchasing equipment, training staff, reaching out to and planning with interested landowners, and working with local fire districts to plan burns. 
   

• Project 2: Fire Project Planning-- The YCRCD has been working with the Yolo County Office of Emergency Services on fire prevention projects such as a chipper program for fuel reduction.
   

• Project 3: SLEWS Mentor:  Recent college graduates are excellent mentors for the SLEWS program as they relate well to the high school students, and can share their experience as college graduates with students who may be disadvantaged and who are considering applying to college. 
   

Organizational & Community Highlights

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The YCRCD has a staff of 14 people who are passionate about our work, and a dynamic and collaborative work environment. Specific projects we are currently working on include planning and implementing habitat enhancements and conservation practices on municipal open spaces, farm and ranchland. We also do restoration implementation and management on public and private land that includes native pollinator hedgerows, riparian restoration, stormwater drainage structures and agricultural field borders. We are working on a watershed-wide project to eradicate giant reed (arundo donax) from our riparian areas—which is the first step to creek restoration. A GrizzlyCorps Fellow will have the opportunity to learn how to plan, implement, maintain and monitor upland and riparian restoration sites in lower-elevation California.

 

We embrace a problem‐solving approach to resource management and enjoy working with partners and clients with different perspectives, priorities and temperaments. Field and office work is split about 70/30. The ideal candidate will have an understanding of agricultural practices and some background and interest in plant identification and habitat restoration.

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Yolo County is an agricultural community and home to the University of California, Davis. Fellows can choose to live in the college town of Davis or the city of Woodland or other small towns in the area. It is helpful to have a vehicle but there is a bus service that is reliable. Being in the Sacramento Valley, the climate is mild in the winter and hot in the summer. We are only 2 hours from the mountains to the east and the ocean to the west. Sacramento is a 25 minute drive away and San Francisco is an hour and a half away. The Amtrak Capitol Corridor connects the City of Davis with both of these cities.