Yuba Watershed Institute

Upcoming Workshop: Working with Local Wood, July 13

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Learn How to Harvest, Handle, Process, & Mill Local Wood to Quality Lumber

JULY 13, 2019
9:30 AM to 4 PM
North Columbia Schoolhouse Cultural Center
17894 Tyler Foote Rd, Nevada City, CA 95959

$25 for YWI members ($35 for non-members)

Milling your own lumber is more than cutting boards from a log. The presenters at this Saturday workshop have many decades of experience working with local woods. Presenters include: Len Brackett (traditional timber framer); Bob Erickson (furniture maker); Theo Killigrew des Tombe (timber faller & mill operator); and Robert Beauchamp (mill operator).

More information and registration

Tree Rings 2019 – Call for Contributions

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The Yuba Watershed Institute (YWI) is currently accepting submissions for the Summer 2019 edition of our journal Tree Rings.

The theme for this year’s journal is “Resilience.”  Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties or to “spring back into shape.” From an ecological perspective, resilience can be defined as “the capacity of a social-ecological system to absorb or withstand perturbations and other stressors such that the system remains within the same regime, essentially maintaining its structure and functions.”

How can we create resilience in our lives, communities, and ecosystems, especially in light of climate change, and the increasing risk of catastrophic fire, drought, flooding, and other extreme events? How can we prepare for and adapt to the changes that we know are coming and, in some cases, are already here? What are the strategies, practices, and tools that can keep our communities safe, strong, and capable of bouncing back? And what can we learn from the tragic losses and courageous resilience of our neighbors in Butte County, who are recovering from the recent Camp Fire?

Please share your reflections, musings, and perspectives on this topic in the form of art, photographs, letters, notes, poems, and articles. We welcome informed viewpoints and personal narratives related to the topic of resilience from the personal to the ecological scale. We are also always happy to receive stories, art, and poetry related to natural history of the ‘Inimim Forest and living in harmony with this place.

Please limit articles and letters to 1,000 words or less.

Please email your submissions to cynthia@yubawatershedinstitute.org by June 17, 2019.

This edition will be edited by Cynthia King, with help from Corinne Munger and Chris Friedel. Please contact Cynthia with any questions at cynthia@yubawatershedinstitute.org.


Register for this weekend’s Fungus Foray – tickets are selling fast!

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The winter rains have come, which means we should see a good crop of wild mushrooms at our Yuba Watershed Fungus Foray and Wild Mushroom Exposition, on December 8 – 9, 2018.

We have an great lineup of speakers and activities for this year’s Fungus Foray, including Sunday workshops on mushroom cultivation, cooking with wild mushrooms, and making mushroom medicines.

Online pre-registration is required for participation in the Saturday morning foray, so sign up today while spaces are still available!

Saturday’s Schedule:

9:00 – 9:15 • Sign in and Register. Please arrive by 9:00 to ensure time for orientation.

9:15 – 10:00 • “Introduction to the Foray” and “Basic Forms of Fungi and Where to Find Them” – Daniel Nicholson, local mycologist and naturalist

9:30 – 10:15 • Foray groups organize and depart to foraging sites in the Tahoe National Forest and nearby U.S. Bureau of Land Management lands

1:15 -1:30 • Leave Foray sites and return to Shady Creek Center

2:30 – 3:30 • “Fungi of Vanuatu” – Dr. Brian Perry, mycologist and professor

3:30 – 4:30 • “Santa Cruz Fungi and Myco-flora Project” – Christian Schwarz, mycologist and author

Sunday’s Schedule:

11:30 -12:30 • “Fungi of Mexico (Hongos Insolitos de Mexico)” – Alan Rockefeller, mycologist

11:30 – 1:00 • “Uses of Fungi in Society” and “Mushroom Cultivation Workshop: Make Your Own Mushroom Kit” (1 per family to take home!) – Jeff Weld, farmer (New Leaf Permaculture Farm)

1:15 – 2:30 • “How to Cook Mushrooms, Creatively and a Wild Mushroom Cooking Demonstration” – Chad Hyatt, chef and author

2:45 -4:00 • “Medicinal Mushrooms of California” and “How to Make Medicine with Mushrooms” workshop – Dr. Christopher Hobbs, herbalist and author

Help us make the community more fire safe

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Dear friends and supporters of the YWI,

The recent fires in Butte County and other parts of the state are a wake-up call. Only luck has kept Nevada County from being next, and we need to be doing more to protect our homes, our community, and our watershed.

The YWI has been working for years to make the forests of the San Juan Ridge safer from “catastrophic” wildfires, while improving the resilience of the landscape to drought, bark beetles, and climate change. Our work has only gotten more important as the years go on.

There are huge opportunities right now for making the San Juan Ridge and the rest of the Yuba River watershed more fire safe and climate resilient. Recent state legislation has authorized over $200 million in grants each year until 2024 for forest health and fire prevention projects.

The YWI was lucky to be awarded some of this funding this year for the ‘Inimim Forest, our collaborative project with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. We received a $75,000 planning grant from the Sierra Nevada Conservancy and a $415,000 fire prevention grant from CAL FIRE.

However, these recent successes have not come without their own challenges, and this is where we need your help!

Our grants from these state agencies are “reimbursable,” which means that we have to spend our own money before we can get reimbursed from the state. We need to develop a “working pool” of funding in order to meet our commitments to our funders and do the much-needed work of keeping our local ecosystems resilient and fire safe.

Please consider helping us to do this important work by starting or renewing your YWI membership today!

Renew at www.yubawatershedinstitute.org/membership/ or by sending us a check at P.O. Box 2198, Nevada City, CA 95959.

Your generous support will also help us provide other programs that the community has grown to love, including:

  • The annual Yuba Watershed Fungus Foray and Wild Mushroom Exposition, which will be held this year on December 8-9 at the Shady Creek Outdoor School and Event Center.
  • Our periodic publication Tree Rings: the Journal of the Yuba Watershed Institute, where we bring you essays, artwork, and poetry on current watershed-related themes.
  • Popular educational field programs, volunteer events, and evening workshops.

We are grateful for any support you’ve given in the past and hope that you will be inspired to help the YWI into its next phase by contributing at an increased level. Thank you for your enduring dedication to preserving the biodiversity of the Yuba River watershed and beyond!

Sincerely,

Chris Friedel
Executive Director