Restore Nature- Get Engaged
Restore Nature- Get Engaged
Why?
When you are starting a new topic, it's great to find fun, informative, and impactful ways to get engaged.
If you are leading a Team, this is a great place to start when planning your Team Gathering.
Survey your block's street trees
Draw a simple map of your block and record the trees you find. A plant identifier app can help you identify the species. This is a great project to do together as a team.
Tour the Petaluma River
Check out the programs and cleanup days offered by the nonprofit Friends of the Petaluma River.
And go for a walk out past the River Heritage Center onto the Petaluma River Park.
Watch/read/listen to learn more
VIDEO: For the Birds: The Birdsong Project - Rare Birds
For the Birds: The Birdsong Project is a historic and unprecedented outpouring of creativity by more than 220 music artists, actors, literary figures, and visual artists. They’ve come together to celebrate the joy birds bring to our lives and to elevate their message about the environmental threats we all face.
The Birdsong Project was produced by Grammy Award-winning music supervisor Randall Poster. Original music, artwork, and poetry performances are available on digital streaming platforms and as a limited-edition LP box set. All proceeds benefit Audubon's mission to protect birds and the places they need. To get Birdsong Project updates, sign up here.
VIDEO: TedX - A guerilla gardener in South Central LA
Ron Finley plants vegetable gardens in South Central LA -- in abandoned lots, traffic medians, along the curbs. Why? For fun, for defiance, for beauty and to offer some alternative to fast food in a community where "the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys."
MOVIE: Fools & Dreamers: Regenerating a Native Forest
Fools & Dreamers: Regenerating a Native Forest is a free 30-minute documentary about Hinewai Nature Reserve – on New Zealand’s Banks Peninsula – and its kaitiaki/manager of 30 years, botanist Hugh Wilson. In 1987, Hugh let the local community know of his plans to allow the introduced “weed” gorse to grow as a nurse canopy to regenerate farmland into native forest. The people were not only skeptical but outright angry – the plan was the sort to be expected only of “fools and dreamers.”
Now considered a hero locally and across the country, Hugh oversees 1,500 hectares resplendent in native forest, where birds and other wildlife are abundant and 47 known waterfalls are in permanent flow. He has proven without doubt that nature knows best – and that he is no fool.
MOVIE: Bringing Back Our Wetland
Directed and filmed by Michael Love, Bringing Back Our Wetland follows a community in Santa Barbara led by visionary environmentalists as they work to restore the upper Devereux slough in Goleta to its natural state. The wetland had been converted into a golf course in the 1960s. It took nearly a decade to restore. Chasing Coral
Coral reefs around the world are vanishing at an unprecedented rate. A team of divers, photographers, and scientists set out on a thrilling ocean adventure to discover why and to reveal the underwater mystery to the world.
MOVIE: Common Ground
From the filmmakers of Kiss the Ground (Netflix) comes the follow-up documentary Common Ground, premiering globally at Tribeca Film Festival and in theaters in fall of 2023. Sobering yet hopeful, Common Ground exposes the toxic interconnections between American farming policy, politics, and health. It does this by sharing stories of destruction and regeneration, while exploring how people from different walks of life share one thing in common – the very soil beneath their feet.
MOVIE: The Issue with Tissue
The Issue with Tissue: A Boreal Love Story documents the largely untold story of the boreal forest and the Indigenous First Nations who call it home. Protecting and conserving it is an existential imperative, especially given that the boreal forest is being clear cut for the manufacture of toilet paper.
Told in the words and voices of the First Nations Elders and Leaders of the boreal, leading scientists, and activists, the film creates a kind of talking circle that inspires storytellers to speak with candor and intimacy about the issues confronting us all. It explains that the way forward lies in elevating and supporting indigenous knowledge and stewardship rooted in an age-old connection to the boreal forest and the trees that are housed therein.
BOOK: Climate: A New Story
By Charles Eisenstein, this book flips the script on climate change. Eisenstein makes a case for a wholesale reimagining of the framing, tactics, and goals we employ in our journey to heal from ecological destruction.
BOOK: Braiding Sweetgrass
By Robin Kimmerer, this beautiful story of “indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teaching of plants” offers so many magical nuggets of inspiration. This book will help you appreciate all the ways we are interconnected - how the earth cares for us and how we care for each other.
Use your voice
Attend a Daily Acts Workshop
The local nonprofit Daily Acts hosts inspiring and informative workshops and volunteer work days all over Sonoma County. Learn how to transform your lawn into a food forest, capture rainwater, plant pollinator gardens, and more!
VOTE! PLEASE, VOTE!
Tired of year after year of firestorms, atmospheric rivers, heat domes, polar vortexes, and megadroughts? THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU CAN DO IS MAKE CLIMATE A TOP VOTING ISSUE!!! Tell your representatives that this is not an acceptable future for our children and grandchildren. Vote like the lives of everyone you love are at risk, because they are.
Write letters
We can't prevent all emergencies. But our local, state, and federal officials can take steps to minimize risks and come to the aid of residents after an emergency. For example, allowing building in floodplains doesn’t make sense for many reasons. Know who your representatives are and don’t be shy about letting them know what you expect from them.
And remember to also lead with gratitude, sending words of encouragement and thanks to representatives who have done good things. This is just as important.
Here is contact information for your government officials:
Assembly Member Damon Connolly
California Senator Alex Padilla
California Senator Dianne Feinstein
Talk to friends & family
Use the things you are doing and learning in this program as conversation starters. Even a little small talk around the water cooler at work might influence someone to follow your lead and do something to prepare for emergencies.
Help others take action
Not everyone has the resources or ability to take key emergency prep steps. Offer a helping hand by gathering supplies, assembling go bags, or sharing contact information, for example. After all, we are stronger together, Sonoma County! We have learned this the hard way, through fires and floods.
