Yuba Watershed Institute

Meet the YWI’s new staff members!

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New YWI staff members: Cameron Musser (left) and Corinne Munger (right)

The Yuba Watershed Institute (YWI) is pleased to announce that we have hired two new staff members to assist with our forest stewardship planning and implementation projects. These positions will largely be supported by three grants from the Sierra Nevada Conservancy’s Proposition 1/Proposition 68 Forest Health grant program that were awarded to the YWI this past March.

Cameron Musser has been brought on as our new Forest Health Project Manager. With a B.S. in Genetics and Plant Biology from U.C. Berkeley, a M.F.S. from Yale’s School of the Environment, and experience in Sierra Nevada industrial forestry, Cameron brings extensive forestry knowledge to the YWI.

We have also hired Corinne Munger as our Biologist/Environmental Planner. Corinne has a B.A. in Environmental Studies from U.C. Santa Cruz, a M.S. in Biology from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and 17 years of experience as a biologist and environmental planner. Having served on the the YWI board of directors since 2013, Corinne is deeply invested in carrying out the YWI’s mission through her contributions to our planning efforts.  

It has been a busy start for our new staffers as the ‘Inimim Forest Restoration Project‘s implementation phase for 2021 gets underway. After she was acquainted with the ‘Inimim Forest, Cameron made her treatment method and prescription recommendations for 160 acres of fuels reduction within the ‘Inimim Forest’s Big Parcel and 70 acres of road-side shaded fuel breaks throughout different U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) parcels on the San Juan Ridge.

In late October, the YWI team released a request for proposals that lays out the project details, environmental compliance requirements, and general conditions for potential contractors. Pink, blue, and orange flagging is hanging throughout the ‘Inimim Forest — ready to show contractors the project boundaries, important water features, and vegetation that has been selected to remain untouched. The stage is set for contracts to be awarded at the beginning of December for work beginning after the holidays in January.

Other happenings around the ‘Inimim Forest include burn pile preparation at the Shields Camp parcel and the upcoming annual Fungus Foray. The ‘Inimim Forest has been selected to host one of The Nature Conservancy’s Prescribed Fire TRaining EXchange (TREX) events for the upcoming spring. In collaboration with the Yuba Forest Network and Open Canopy LLC, this training event will tentatively take place in April on the Shields Camp and Bear Tree Parcels of the ‘Inimim Forest, where there is a high density of burn piles from previous fuels reduction treatments.

Stay tuned for more information about the scaled-back, COVID-compliant version of the Fungus Foray that we will be hosting in mid-December.

Tree Rings – Seeking submissions by March 1

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The Yuba Watershed Institute (YWI) is currently accepting submissions for the next edition of our journal Tree Rings. In particular we are seeking submissions of artwork.

Between the COVID-19 pandemic and another record-breaking fire season, 2020 was quite a year. How have these crises influenced your thinking about our local ecology? How has sheltering in place affected your connection to the land and to others in the community? At the end of another devastating fire season in California, including the nearby Jones and North Complex fires, the need for increased landscape resilience appears greater than ever. What specific tools can we use to improve our stewardship of the land, from the small homestead to the watershed scale, especially in light of climate change? Can we respond to these compounding crises in a way that increases our ecological and community resilience? 

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

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

Please contact Cynthia King with any questions at cynthia@yubawatershedinstitute.org

Please email your submissions to cynthia@yubawatershedinstitute.org by March 1, 2021.

An update from the ‘Inimim Forest

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200-ft shaded fuel break implemented along Sages Road on the San Juan Ridge

Dear Friends of YWI,

We hope that this message finds you well, safe, and as healthy as possible. It has been a difficult few months, between the COVID-19 pandemic, related economic disruptions, and the recent protests resulting from the police violence and deeply entrenched racial injustice in this country. While our work on the ‘Inimim Forest sometimes feels far away from these disturbances, we are, in fact, all connected and affected by these larger events. Our thoughts are with everyone who is struggling in these times, and we are committed to doing our part to strengthen the health, resilience, and equity within our human and natural communities.

We’re writing to share a few updates on our recent work to increase the resilience of the ‘Inimim Forest and to improve the health of the broader Yuba watershed.

Small diameter trees cut and dragged to Jackass Flats Road for chipping and hauling

With the help of Mooretown Rancheria, MP Forestry, and Sierra Nevada Forestry Service, we have successfully implemented a 200-feet wide shaded fuel break on 55-acres of the ‘Inimim Forest. The project improves safety in the case of a wildfire by reducing understory fuels along key roads needed for ingress and egress. Approximately 1,350 yards of material were chipped and hauled to the former San Juan Mine site, to be used as part of a future restoration effort.

Chipping hand-cut material along Tyler Foote Road

We have also been working with the Washington Ridge CAL FIRE crews on additional understory fuels reduction on the Bear Tree parcel, near Farrell Ravine Way. The treatment there has been hand cutting and piling small diameter material for future burning. The BLM burned some of last year’s piles on the Bear Tree and Shields Camp parcels this winter. We encourage you to visit those sites, to see how the forest looks before, during, and after these treatments. These two projects are funded by a grant from CAL FIRE.

Piles of brush and small diameter trees for burning on the Bear Tree parcel

With the help of local contractors John Jaynes, Michael DesTombe, and Don Prairie we felled about 15 acres of dead or dying hazard trees along Shields Camp, Lake City, Jackass Flats, Kadaheska, and Sumi Roads. Some of these trees were sold to the mill, some were left in place, and some were masticated to expedite decomposition. With droughts and beetle kills likely to recur in the coming years, we are experimenting with different methods of removing these hazardous trees in economical ways, and look forward to monitoring the ecological outcomes in the months and years ahead. This work was funded by a grant from the Sierra Nevada Conservancy.

Mike DesTombe felling a hazard tree on the Shields Camp parcel

Just before the statewide shelter-in-place order, we co-hosted our first Women’s Land Stewardship and Chainsaw Workshop with Mud and Pearls. The event was a great success and we look forward to offering similar workshops in the future to empower women to be knowledgeable and active stewards of our ecological landscapes.

Looking forward, we are pleased to announce that in March we received three grants from the Sierra Nevada Conservancy to support new and ongoing projects. Two of these grants will launch new planning projects at Round Mountain and Little Deer Creek, and the third one will support implementation of forest restoration treatments on 314 acres of the ‘Inimim Forest. We are delighted to receive additional funding support from the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, and look forward to working with community members and new partners, such as Sierra Streams Institute and the Bear Yuba Land Trust, to expand collaborative stewardship with the BLM and private landowners south of the South Fork of the Yuba River.

Thank you for your ongoing interest in and support of our work. Please reach out with questions or ideas about how we can work together going forward.

P.S. In case you missed it, our last edition of Tree Rings included some reflections on resilience and how to prepare for and respond to social and ecological disturbances. If you’re looking for some inspiration as we continue to weather the various disturbances of the day you can read the issue here.