By all accounts, the 2024 Northern California Singletrack Summit was a great success! The Watershed Center hosted 73 participants from 20 organizations and led a Dry-Stack Masonry Workshop, held a Taps for Trails fundraiser, facilitated presentations from nine organizations, and led downhill and cross-country bike rides. A great deal of fun and learning occurred and hopes are high that economic development in the region will flourish.

The Watershed Research and Training Center (WRTC) has recently been awarded nearly $7 million by the CAL FIRE Forest Health program to implement the Southern Trinity Fire Resilience Project (Project).

The Project is designed to restore forest health, protect watersheds and communities, promote long-term storage of carbon in trees and forest soil, and minimize the loss of forest carbon by increasing forest wildfire resilience. The Project builds on over a decade of work and seeks to increase the geographic scope, pace, scale, and overall impact of WRTC’s forest management and fuel reduction efforts throughout Trinity County.

Jackie Perry, Wildlife Program Manager, sat with me for an interview about her work surveying for spotted owls and other raptors in the forested mountains of Trinity County. Having started her career at the Watershed Center in 2019, she has witnessed the program grow from four people to fourteen technicians slated to begin their 2024 season this spring.