`Dream team' of local experts sponsors collaborations to restore Cobb Watershed
The Cobb Watershed Education and Restoration Program (Cobb WERP) is making history in Lake County by facilitating partnerships between private landowners and local Tribal communities to improve creekside land stewardship. During its first year of operation, six events — two community forums and four workshops — were held on properties owned and managed by Mandala Springs Wellness Retreat, the Cobb Water District, and multiple individual landowners, with acreage ranging from less than 0.5 acres to over 100 acres.
The Cobb WERP, initially funded by the Blue Ribbon Committee for the Rehabilitation of Clear Lake, with additional funding from the PG&E Corporate Foundation, began with the vision of restoring connectivity to hitchbearing streams with headwaters on Cobb Mountain. The program's focus on the northern side of Cobb Mountain involves working with landowners managing properties along Adobe, Cole, and Kelsey Creeks and their tributaries.
Each workshop covered topics ranging from Tribal culture and history, water quality monitoring, land stewardship for fire resilience, and grants available to fund restoration projects; and incorporated a half-day of field activities where everyone pitched in on micro-restoration projects to reduce sediment erosion into waterways, promote new growth by pruning back riparian plants such as willow and removing invasive blackberries, reduce woodland fuel loads, plant traditional basketry species like sedge, and survey properties for future restoration projects and planned cultural (prescribed) burns.
The Program's core team is composed of community-based organization leaders from the Cobb Area Council, the Seigler Springs Community Redevelopment Association, the Tribal Ecorestoration Alliance (TERA), the Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians environmental and cultural departments, the private engineering firm Flowwest, and the Redwood Valley Little River Band of Pomo Indians.
The program's core team includes nationallyrenowned experts who have helped bring millions of dollars of state and federal funds to Lake County through advocacy for improved water quality, good fire, traditional ecological knowledge, and the endangered Clear Lake hitch.
“There are no longer any non-polluted water sources in California. In just 180 years of California being overtaken by Unsettlers, we've lost 90% of our wetlands and 95% of our native grasslands. I hope that the reversal of these trends will be just as fast. If you love these areas like I do, then you should also be committed to healing the lands, the water, and the people.” says Corine Pearce, master basketweaver and cultural educator from the Redwood Valley Little River Band of Pomo Indians.
Participants in the Cobb WERP have the opportunity for property assessments by TERA to determine best practices for fire resilience, including putting good fire — cultural burning, a form of prescribed burning — onto their lands. “The plants, the animals, the land, are all related — and we need fire to help maintain healthy ecological relationships,” stated Ron Montez Sr., core team member and the Tribal Historical Preservation Officer for the Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians.
“When we burn, we build the knowledge base for young people, kids, elders. Our fires move nice and slow. To have good fire on the ground, for our basketry plants, for our food resources, is way better for our communities.” Stoney Timmons, TERA crew from Robinson Rancheria.
The Program has provided thousands of dollars worth of free water testing and site-based restoration expertise to the first cohort of local landowners. Sarah Ryan led the water monitoring effort, testing wells and creeks on participant properties for cyanotoxins, coliform bacteria, and nutrient loading. In one site, where ruminantbased coliform was found in the creek, the Program provided supplies and labor to install straw wattles around a livestock enclosure to help protect the streambed.
“It's been amazing working with this group of individuals who are passionate and so knowledgeable, too. We've all gotten such an education in connecting with the land. At Mandala we walk the talk, and it's very exciting to be a part of this program. I encourage everyone who is interested to sign up for this program,” testified Susan Mccarthy of Mandala Springs Wellness Retreat.
SSCRA Program Director Magdalena Valderrama observes that “since the Valley Fire in 2015, the Cobb Mt. community has been actively developing a new relationship with the land, beginning with fire resilience. The Cobb WERP program will help our community regain the critical connections among fire safety, watershed health, and long-term stewardship practices. We have been particularly grateful for the experience and knowledge shared by our Tribal partners. Their roots in and care for this place go back thousands of years.”
One of the most exciting initiatives associated with the Program is a new grant program offered by the Natural Resource Conservation Service and administered by the Lake County Water Resources Department. Qualifying property owners — anyone with at least 10% of their properties covered by trees or with agricultural activities — who are interested in reducing erosion and other activities to improve water quality can fill out a short online application at https://bit.ly/funds_to_address_runoff
Property owners who plan to invest in water quality improvement projects such as: improving unpaved roads, installing fencing to reduce livestock damage, reducing erosion with cover crops, improving water retention by removing invasive species or reducing fuel loads, and/or improving fish passage can be partially reimbursed for pre-approved costs through this funding source.
To sustain the Program's work into the future, the team members are busily writing grants for smallscale restoration projects through 2024-2026. For more information, contact Eliot Hurwitz at (707) 3509405