Community Partnership: Worker Leaders with North Bay Jobs with Justice Create Fuel Breaks at a LandPaths’ Preserve
Category: Blog, Community Resilience, forestry, Grasslands, Growing Community with Nature, Ocean Song, Ocean Song, Partners, Partnerships, Prescribed Burn, slow restoration, Stewardship, Wildfire Fuel Reduction
By LandPaths Staff
June 18, 2024
Community partnerships lie at the heart of LandPaths’ mission to foster a love of the land in Sonoma County. In March, we collaborated with worker leaders with North Bay Jobs with Justice to create a shaded fuel break along a quarter mile driveway and evacuation route at Ocean Song/Myers Preserve.
Ocean Song/Myers is located on the ancestral home of the Coast Miwok people and the Southern Pomo people, past, present, and future. We recognize them as the first people and the first stewards of this land. We are on occupied territory and acknowledge the ongoing devastation of colonization.
This nearly 800 acre preserve stewarded by LandPaths in western Sonoma County teems with native coastal grasslands, canyons, pristine ponds and streams, mixed oak woodlands, redwoods, and a habitat garden that benefits pollinators, birds, and humans alike. A breath-taking abundance of plant and animal life call this place home.
As part of the project, workers thinned and limbed the trees, shrubs, and vines along the driveway, as a way to reduce the ability of wildfires to grow hot and spread. The following month, the crew returned to perform a prescribed burn of the woody material, reintroducing good fire to the land and dramatically reducing the amount of combustible fuel on the ground.
Click here to see a video about the project on Instagram
Shaded fuel breaks are carefully planned thinning of dense tree cover and the removal of underlying brush, placed in strategic locations along a ridge, access road, or other locations near structures.
Miles Sarvis-Wilburn, a Stewardship Field Specialist at LandPaths, joined the crew on the first and last days of the project. He says he was impressed by the way the crew approached the work, and their understanding of an ecological approach to shaded fuel breaks. For example, the California Lilac and coffeeberry plants planted as pollinator habitat were carefully pruned to meet the requirements for the fuel break but also retain forage.
“It’s details like these that are often overlooked in more conventional fuels reduction work,” says Miles, “It brought a smile to my face to see this land I steward year-round so well cared for by the worker leaders.”
“We’re not just saving human lives, but the lives of wildlife too,” said one worker leader.
The result of this community partnership is increased safety in the case of wildfire for residents, especially in regard to a clear evacuation route. The fuel break also offers firefighters a staging ground to help slow and even stop the spread of wildfire, reducing the risk for the broader community in West County.
We look forward to more partnerships like this for land and people in the future!
Partners
Miles Sarvis-Wilburn, Senior Stewardship Field Specialist at LandPaths
" It brought a smile to my face to see this land I steward year-round so well cared for by the worker leaders. "
