eNewsletter | September Edition
In this month's edition:

  • Petaluma River Watershed Community input needed
  • Welcome to the team, Robert!
  • Citizen Science - inventory of drought conditions
  • UCCE Forest Stewardship Workshop coming soon!
  • Russian River Cleanup September 18
What's New at Your RCD
Petaluma River Watershed Collaborative Community Input
Funded by the Bureau of Reclamation’s WaterSMART program, Project Manager Katie Robbins has led efforts to build watershed management and restoration capacity amongst local stakeholder groups via the Petaluma River Watershed Collaborative. While funded under the current grant, the RCD has organized and held several stakeholder meetings to discuss key watershed concerns, restoration potential, river resident and working lands concerns, and collaborative approaches in order to revise and update the Draft Petaluma Watershed Enhancement Plan and develop an Action Plan to identify and advance watershed restoration projects and priorities.

These planning efforts focus on collaborative stakeholder approaches to identify watershed needs, as well as opportunities to protect, conserve, restore, and enhance the natural resources of the watershed for both community and ecological benefit. Visit the Petaluma River Watershed page for more details about these efforts, and read on for ways to give your input.

How to get involved
Gaining insights and opinions from community members, landowners, and local stakeholders to utilize throughout the planning process of both Plans is key to our success. Please see the links below for additional information on the Collaborative and to fill out the surveys below. Click the flyer to the right for more details >>>

Outreach Video: Petaluma Watershed Collaborative – 2021 Activities and Efforts

For more information or specific questions, please contact Katie Robbins, Project Manager at 707.569.1448 ext 104 or krobbins@sonomarcd.org.

Welcome to the team, Robert!
We are elated to welcome Robert Heim as our newest Program Assistant! Robert came to us from the Tuolumne River Trust and the Sierra Nevada AmeriCorps Partnership in Sonora as a Forest Health Specialist. He is a graduate of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and holds a M.S. from the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at UC Santa Barbara where he focused on Conservation Planning and had a focus in Strategic Environmental Communication. Robert has experience developing community partnerships, GIS, and forest health. He is excited to be back in the Bay Area where he grew up!
Community Engagement
Situational Awareness Inventory of California Drought Conditions
Shared from California Environmental Water Network
This inventory of streamflow conditions across California was created by the California Environmental Water Network to document the impacts that this historic drought is having on aquatic ecosystems and the communities who rely on them. This community science approach allows for practitioners, agency staff, community members and others to anonymously document real-time situations as they are occurring on the ground. Survey link here!
Workshops | Resources
California Forest Stewardship Workshop October-November
Shared from University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) and partners
This workshop series will help landowners develop plans to improve and protect their forest lands in an ecologically and economically sustainable manner. The workshops will address management objectives and planning, forest restoration, fuels reduction, project development, permitting, and cost-share opportunities. Participants will connect with other landowners and learn how to collect information to develop their own management plans. Participants who complete the course will be eligible for a free visit by a Registered Professional Forester to assess its content. Click on flyer for more details.

Registration for the workshop costs $60. Materials will be provided. Breakfast and lunches will be provided for in-person workshop days. Registration is available at http://ucanr.edu/forestryworskhopregistration.

Contact Kim Ingram at kcingram@ucanr.edu with your questions.
Don't miss the Annual Russian River Cleanup Event 9/18!
Shared from the Russian Riverkeeper and Russian River Watershed Cleanup. The Sonoma RCD is a proud sponsor of this event each year.
We are very excited to be back this Fall with you, our favorite river stewardship volunteers! Save the Date of the morning of Saturday, September 18, 2021. We will have several locations available for you to sign up and clean up. Due to the drought conditions and very low flow in the Russian River, it will not be possible to have canoe routes this year.

We also encourage individuals and family groups to perform their own cleanup at their favorite river spot, and post results on the Russian River Watershed Cleanup Facebook page. Use #russianriverkeepercleanteam to help us gather important data on what we are removing from our watershed. It is so important to remove this trash before it gets washed out to sea in the coming rainy season. Thank you for your help! For more information, visit the Russian Riverkeeper website.
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