It's that time of the year again: time to monitor your stream crossings, maintain culverts, and storm-proof your roads. Storm-proofing has numerous benefits, including reducing annual road maintenance costs, preventing sediments from going into our streams, allowing storm-water to sink into our landscape, and reducing flashiness of streams. Storm-proofing unpaved roads can largely be done by draining the road surface with rolling dips or water bars. Remember, straw wattles are not designed to drain roads.

More info about storm-proofing your roads can be found here on the Napa RCD website.

Make sure you go through the handy Storm-proof Roads Checklist as you prepare your property for winter.

See drawings for road drainage structures at the bottom of the Roads Storm-proofing page on our website.

Napa RCD would like to introduce our newest employee, Alex Wilbanks! He is joining the Napa RCD team as a Forestry Project Manager.

Alex is not new to the North Bay- he grew up in Sonoma County and attended New Tech High School here in the City of Napa. He recently moved back to the Bay Area from Garden City, Kansas.

Although always interested in the outdoors, Alex did not become involved in the world of resource conservation until he started studying Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Biology at the University of Nevada Reno. Alex found his way to the forestry field as he developed an interest in prescribed fire and joined a prescribed burn crew in Arkansas focused on reducing cedar encroachment and improving the health of woodland ecosystems.

Prior to joining the Napa RCD team, Alex was working for Pheasants Forever as the Coordinating Wildlife Biologist for Grazing Lands and developing prescribed grazing plans for landowners enrolled in NRCS programs.

Here at Napa RCD, he will be working with landowners interested in increasing and maintaining the ecological health and wildfire resilience of their forests. Alex is excited about helping landowners understand how they can use and implement prescribed fire to achieve ecological goals on their property. He has an interest in prescribed fire and pollinators, both of which are areas of focus for us here at Napa RCD!

We're not all work and no play here at the office, and Alex is no exception! When not out in the field, Alex enjoys reading, hiking, and playing sports. And a fun fact? Alex once worked and lived at a remote fish hatchery in Alaska!

Alex will be hitting the ground running with field work, so make sure to say hi and welcome him back to the area when you see him. We're excited to have you join the team, Alex!

We will again be hosting our Community Oak Planting Day on Green Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) from 9-11:30am at Alston Park. Join Napa RCD and Opt Outside for the Oaks!

With questions, contact Ashley@NapaRCD.org or 707-690-3117

This month, we've got another feature from our new Resource Conservation Network! Check out this great testimonial about a landowner working with our friends over at Sonoma RCD!

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The barriers to submitting and managing a large grant can be overwhelming for busy land managers. Partnerships with RCDs are crucial to enabling producers to test innovative practices, build community, and grow the body of knowledge around regenerative agriculture. In this Q&A with Byron Palmer at Sonoma Mountain Institute, we learn about his experience partnering with Sonoma RCD to implement a CDFA Healthy Soils Demonstration Project to spread more than 3.5 million pounds of compost across 53 acres.