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Helping you care for our land, water, soil, and wildlife
In this month's edition:
  • Welcome to Bay Friendly Garden Month!
  • Napa River Fish Report
  • April Rainfall Summary
  • COAD Call for Volunteers
  • May Conservation Champion: Carrie Strohl

RCD Events:
  • WILD Napa Online - Beavers in Our Ecosystems - May 13
  • Bay-Friendly Garden Month: LIVE Garden Tour with Henni - May 11
  • BFGM: LIVE Garden Tour with Shelly - May 14
  • BFGM: Organic Vegetable Gardening Workshop - May 14
  • BFGM: Sustainable Garden Design Workshop - May 19
  • BFGM: Garden Pests LIVE Q & A - May 28
  • BFGM: LIVE Garden Tour with Marcy - May 31

Partner Resources:
  • Napa Firewise - Chipping Services
Did you know that we have a separate email list for volunteers?
Welcome to Bay-Friendly Garden Month!
Celebrate sustainable gardening in Napa County with a month-long series of virtual garden visits, workshops, and other local tips and tidbits to take your bay-friendly garden practices to the next level.

Join us and local experts via Facebook Live, Zoom, and more!

Visit NapaRCD.org/2020GardenMonth for the full suite of activities, updated weekly!

Interested in receiving our gardening program updates? Click here
Napa River Fish Report
Jonathan Koehler, Napa RCD Senior Biologist
The March through May steelhead and salmon monitoring season is quickly coming to an end. This winter was exceptionally dry, and low flow conditions made it difficult (often impossible) to catch fish using our rotary screw trap, as we have for the past 12 years. The trap requires a steady downstream current to run efficiently and capture fish. This spring, there were only 11 days with enough flow to fish. The trap sat heart breakingly idle the remainder of the time.

There were several highlights in this otherwise forgettable monitoring year. First, we managed to catch 43 steelhead and 33 Chinook salmon smolts during a brief 7-day sampling stint following a small storm in April. This was a surprisingly high number of fish in a short amount of time. It is reassuring that, although our ability to monitor was greatly limited this year, steelhead and salmon were still successfully spawning and migrating to and from the ocean, more or less as usual. 

Another exciting result came in February and again in March when two tagged steelhead adults returned to the Napa River and were detected by our PIT tag antenna. These fish were both tagged as smolts in spring 2018 and have been at sea for approximately two years before returning to spawn. Since 2013, we have tagged over 500 steelhead smolts, and these fish represented just the fourth and fifth times we have confirmed their return. 

Finally, 2020 had an unusually high abundance of Pacific lamprey, with approximately 964 juveniles caught and released in only 11 total days of sampling. This was a good year to have a lot of lampreys because we are collaborating with UC Davis and DWR to collect genetic samples to learn about this poorly understood native species throughout the state. Lampreys are an important part of the river ecosystem, so we are happy to contribute in whatever way we can.

For more details, including graphs and tables, look for the full report later this year . You can also watch a Facebook Live video we did at the trap this year.
April 2020 Rainfall Summary
Paul Blank, Napa RCD Senior Hydrologist
It has been an exceptionally dry year. April brought just one storm and three days of measurable rainfall to the Napa County ALERT monitoring stations . Rainfall totals were again below the monthly average. The rain gauges recorded between 0.56 and 1.54 inches during the month, approximately 3.3% of mean annual rainfall (long-term April average is 6.4%). So far in Water Year 2019-20, we’ve received approximately 44% of our annual rainfall, well below the long-term average of 94% for this time of year. Seasonal rainfall totals at the rain gauges range between 11.5 inches (City of Napa) and 21.5 inches (Mt. Veeder).
Call for Volunteers:
Napa County Community Organizations Active in Disaster (COAD)
In these extraordinary times we hope you are safe and looking out for one another. We’re sending you this email because you’ve supported Napa RCD in the past. We already know that you care.

Here’s an opportunity to help during the COVID-19 crisis.

Napa’s Community Organizations Active in Disaster (COAD - COE-add) was created in 2016. It’s one of many COADs in counties and cities across the nation that focus on helping communities be better prepared in times of crisis: fires, floods, earthquakes - pandemics.

The goals? More clarity and cooperation. Better communication. Less duplication of effort. A keen focus on vulnerable and at-risk members of the community.

In order to coordinate efforts, the COAD volunteer committee invites your participation as one of its Volunteers on Call (VOC) . Together with a dozen other community activists, Hilary Zunin of Napa Valley CanDo and Jeni Olsen of Teens Connect are co-chairing this committee.

VOC includes people throughout Napa County willing to be contacted as volunteer opportunities arise during the COVID-19 crisis. If contacted, you will always have the option to accept an opportunity or not.

Please know that your privacy is respected. Your information will ONLY be shared with vetted organizations seeking volunteers for specific needs.

Each of us is being challenged in ways we couldn’t have imagined just weeks ago. If you are unable to volunteer at this time, we completely understand.

If you’re interested, sign up here.  
April Conservation Champion: Carrie Strohl
Carrie Strohl, also known as The School Garden Doctor, is a fellow member of the Environmental Education Coalition of Napa County (EECNC) and this year she went SO FAR above what could ever have been expected with her creation of the Earth Day Napa- Gone Virtual platform. Carrie formulated the idea, created a straw-man version, and then executed it in a way most of the rest of us EECNC members could not even have imagined.

Because of her work on Earth Day Napa- Gone Virtual and her work in the field of environmental education and conservation overall in Napa County, we are thrilled to have Carrie as our May Conservation Champion!

Although not a Napa native (she's actually a Midwesterner from Wisconsin!), Carrie has lived in Napa for 12 years and her heart has been here even longer. Carrie has been around the Napa environmental education field for a while as part of her work at Pueblo Vista Environmental Science Magnet School, where she coaches teachers on implementing bilingual science instruction. She's been an official member of EECNC for almost one year.

Carrie is also no stranger to Napa RCD, as she has participated in many of our community programs including MLK Day service projects, the Bay-Friendly Garden Tour, and our Laundry to Landscape Greywater workshop a couple years ago! Currently Carrie is helping Napa RCD evaluate outcomes of our Salmon to Sanctuary high school program. Her work is helping us ensure that we provide a meaningful program for area high school students.

Carrie embraces a broader view than most when it comes to defining the term "scientist" and she advocates for a widening of that term through the many programs she offers. Dirt Girls encourages youth to explore their science identities through work and play in the garden.

More than anything, Carrie says that she loves sharing science with others, but in a way that is inclusive to all and encourages equity in the field.

Our garden hats go off to you, Carrie, and thanks for all your hard work here in Napa County!
Napa RCD Events
May 13 - WILD Napa County - Beavers in our Ecosystems
May 19 - BFGM: Sustainable Garden Design
Partner Resources
Help support RCD Programs - Donate Today!
Napa County Resource Conservation District | 707-252-4189 | NapaRCD.org