​Monarch Habitat

Napa Valley, CA
2021-'22

Monarch populations in the west have collapsed. In the ’80s we counted 4.5 million Monarchs per year; in November 2020 we counted fewer than 2,000. Volunteers have galvanized across the West for their rescue, and so have we. In collaboration with Napa County Resource Conservation District we’ll be conducting pollinator restoration trials to determine best practices for landscape-scale restoration of Monarch habitat and pollinators of all kinds. Join us to help these iconic species.

Oak Woodlands

Napa Valley, CA
2022

The iconic oak woodlands of California used to sweep in unbroken forest from the central valley to the far north of the state. Since the coming of the Spanish in the 1770s and the miners in 1849, they’ve been systematically eradicated. We are helping to restore those fabled forests, again in collaboration with the Napa County RCD. The seedpods of these giant acorns are the size of small lemons but we’ll droneseed them by the thousands to help restore what was once a densely biodiverse ecosystem, home to the California Golden Bear, now extinct in the wild, and the Giant California Condor, slowly recovering their numbers.

Fire-Impacted Forest

Sonoma, CA​
An important study for extreme fire-damaged oak woodlands in the burnt hills between Santa Rosa and St. Helena. We’ll establish baselines for best practices and highest germination rates. Like our other trials this will be a careful study. This one will be designed specifically to help us understand how to efficiently and effectively restore entire ecosystems critically damaged by fire.