Climate Stewardship: Taking Collective Action to Protect California

By Adina Merenlender

As climate disruption intensifies the world over, Californians are finding solutions across a diversity of communities and landscapes.
 
Though climate change is a global existential threat, we cannot wait for nation-states to solve the problem when there are actions we can take now to protect our own communities. In Climate Stewardship: Taking Collective Action to Protect California, readers are invited on a journey to discover that all life is interconnected and shaped by climate and to learn how communities can help tackle climate change. 
 
Climate Stewardship shares stories from everyday people and shows how their actions enhance the resilience of communities and ecosystems across ten distinct bioregions. Climate science that justifies these actions is woven throughout, making it easy to learn about Earth's complex systems. The authors interpret and communicate these stories in a way that is enjoyable, inspiring, and even amusing.
 
California is uniquely positioned to develop and implement novel solutions to widespread climate challenges, owing to the state's remarkable biogeographic diversity and robust public science programs. Produced in collaboration with the UC California Naturalist Program, Climate Stewardship focuses on regenerative approaches to energy, agriculture, and land and water use across forested, agricultural, and urban landscapes. The authors' hopeful and encouraging tone aims to help readers develop a sense that they, too, can act now to make meaningful change in their communities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Sep 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9780520976450

Adina Merenlender

Adina Merenlender is an internationally recognized conservation biologist who has authored more than 100 published works. She currently works as a Cooperative Extension Specialist in the Environmental Science, Policy, and Management Department at UC Berkeley.   Brendan Buhler is an award-winning science writer who has been featured in the Los Angeles Times and in Sierra and California magazines. His work has been collected in The Best American Science and Nature Writing.  

Book preview

Climate Stewardship

The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Anne G. Lipow Endowment Fund in Social Justice and Human Rights.

Climate Stewardship

TAKING COLLECTIVE ACTION TO PROTECT CALIFORNIA

Adina Merenlender with Brendan Buhler

Foreword by Greg Sarris

Illustrations by Obi Kaufmann

UC Logo

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press

Oakland, California

© 2021 by Adina Merenlender and Brendan Buhler

Illustrations at chapter starts are by Obi Kaufmann.

Illustration p. 235, The Sea Is Rising, is by Janina Larenas.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Merenlender, Adina Maya, 1963– author. | Buhler, Brendan, author.

Title: Climate stewardship : taking collective action to protect California / Adina Merenlender with Brendan Buhler.

Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021005201 (print) | LCCN 2021005202 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520378940 (paperback) | ISBN 9780520976450 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Climatic changes—California. | Environmental protection—California—Citizen participation. | Environmental management—California.

Classification: LCC QC984.C2 M47 2021 (print) | LCC QC984.C2 (ebook) | DDC 363.738/74609794—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005201

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005202

Manufactured in the United States of America

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This book is dedicated to climate stewards everywhere: the future is in our hands.

Contents

Foreword by Greg Sarris

Preface: United by Nature, Guided by Science

Acknowledgments

1 Extreme Events: Life in the New Normal

2 Big Bay to Tech Town

3 A Changing Harvest

4 Keeping Forests Green and Snow White

5 Climate Canaries

6 Los Angeles Plants Itself

7 Riding the California Current

In the End

References

Index

Foreword

I’ve told this story a hundred times. Maybe there is no other story worth telling these days. I am driving renowned Pomo basket maker and medicine woman Mabel McKay back to the Yocha Dehe reservation in Yolo County after a talk she gave to a classroom of undergraduates at Stanford University. It is 1988, early autumn. On Highway 80, somewhere near Vacaville, Mabel gazed out the car window to the dry hills. Then she turned back to me.

Everything’s going to burn, she said. Everything’s going to go dry. There will be no escaping it. Going to burn, top to bottom. Even the ocean, it will go hot. That’s my latest Dream, what I seen in my Dream. We’re coming to that point.

What do I do? I asked. What am I supposed to do?

Mabel listened, then immediately broke into laughter. She seemed to be making fun of me. That’s cute: ‘What am I supposed to do?’

No, Mabel, I’m serious.

She became quiet, and after a moment answered, You live the best way you know how, what else.

I was used to Mabel’s uncanny interlocutory style, her upending conversation in a way that made you think, wonder. The last Dreamer, or prophet, amongst the Pomo nations of Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino Counties, she was the wisest of teachers. She was the last of many things, the last descendent of the Lolsel Pomo of eastern Lake County and therefore the last to speak her language. She was the last sucking doctor anywhere in California. Indian doctors capable of extracting disease by sucking were considered the most powerful. Her ancestors lived along Clear Lake, the oldest lake in North America, for thousands of years. Arrowheads and other artifacts from the region date back over 14,000 years. But who is counting? These ancestors experienced deep pine forests and sprawling wetlands, and then about 8,000 years ago, with a warming climate, a much drier landscape of grasses and oaks. They adapted, transforming their diet and no doubt patterns and places of social organization. The people, they knowed what to do, Mabel said. They paid attention to their world and their Dreams. The world gives us the Dreams.

What Mabel seemed to be describing was a relationship with the world so intimate that the dichotomy between person and place, spiritual and physical, was collapsed. This intimacy with the environment no doubt was what predicated a culture of reciprocity and responsibility, ensuring continuance for a people and their world over eons. Of course, Mabel, who died in 1993, might tell you that I’m talking too much, too busy trying to explain things. Often, I drove Mabel to visit sacred places she remembered as a child: Clear Lake shore where she danced in a Roundhouse with her grandmother, a cave where a medicine man kept his cloak of white eagle feathers. Many of these places were buried under roads and housing tracts. A creek bed where Mabel gathered sedge root for basketmaking sits under Lake Sonoma. Mabel wasn’t preoccupied with the loss. She kept telling stories. So often the stories wandered, or so it seemed to me, and only later, upon reflection, would I make a connection between them and then understand them in a new way, or better said, make meaning.

So it is now with a recounting of her apocalyptic Dream of fire. I’ve told that Dream over and over in light of the climate disaster and the associated horrific fires—I’ve told it as proof of a dire prophecy. But I’ve left out the larger context of Mabel’s revelation. I’ve left out other parts of the story, which I’m urgently reminded of. Earlier in the day, while talking to the Stanford students, Mabel described the end of the world as coming in fire and destruction, again as shown to her in her Dream. She told the students that the world would be renewed again, that people would be planted here again, but we won’t know who those people will be. I’d heard Mabel before tell of the end of the world, and perhaps influenced by my Catholic upbringing, her description of the end had been reminiscent of the description in the Book of Revelations. I hadn’t thought of the world being renewed, perhaps because the Biblical version had influenced me to think otherwise. Maybe in light of current world events I’d been plain pessimistic, until now. If global warming and horrific fires have come to pass, wouldn’t I also see a renewed world? Wasn’t it possible?

In Climate Stewardship: Taking Collective Action to Protect California, authors Adina Merenlender and Brenden Buhler describe the challenges, indeed much of the environmental degradation, in California, but more, they relate stories of hope—stories of individuals banding together in numerous ways to address the destruction that, as they say, will help stave off climate disruption and make communities and ecosystems more resilient to change. In seven chapters, the authors focus on particular climate concerns—the wildfires, the compromised San Francisco Bay wetlands, the harmful consequences of large-scale corporate farming, shrinking forests, drier deserts, the Los Angeles metropolis of endless concrete, the rising Pacific Ocean temperature and changing currents—and then relate multiple stories of communities of environmental activists working to address those concerns. What all of them have in mind—whether they’re teachers working with fourth graders to restore Bay Area wetlands, landowners joining with environmental organizations to create habitat corridors, a Native tribe planting an orchard of no-till olives, or a group of Weed Warriors removing invasive plants from the Desert Mountains—what all of them are doing by organizing and collecting together is preparing for, and therefore showing the way to, a renewed world. As I see it, they are the part of Mabel’s story that provides hope. Are they not working to make that part of her Dream of a renewed world as true as the dried hills and fires? They are living the best way we know how.

Greg Sarris

Chairman, Federated Indians

of Graton Rancheria

September 2020

Preface

United by Nature, Guided by Science

The solution to climate grief is climate hope, and hope comes from taking action that will help stave off climate disruption and make communities and ecosystems more resilient to change. Collective action, instead of just individual behavior change, is the best way to solve the climate crisis. Individual actions to reduce one’s own carbon footprint have value, but the transformation needed requires long-term, multigenerational societal engagement. In other words, installing solar at home is a help, but advancing community choice clean energy options for everyone is a solution.

Connecting with others on actions that transcend self is also a path to joy, and without joy it’s hard to have hope. Community-driven initiatives, including environmental stewardship, community science, civic action, communication, and education, can create innovative practices and a shared vision that result in collective impact. These are exciting times in which communities are recognizing the status quo is untenable and are adopting novel approaches, from ecological restoration to promoting regenerative economies focused on thriving rather than infinite growth. Deepening our interconnection with nature and strengthening our interdependence with one another will ensure that resulting collective impacts will be just and sustainable and benefit the entire community of life.

Diversity abounds in California. There are 10 bioregions that make up a global biodiversity hotspot, a tremendous diversity of Indigenous people, a huge variety of cultures, and places that span small towns to megacities with widely ranging socioeconomic conditions. This leads to a wide variety of contexts and ways of knowing. Local communities are best suited to identify, design, and implement what is needed to improve their community and ecosystem resilience. Therefore, most of the climate actions described throughout this book rely on group efforts and are shaped by place in that they are influenced by local social-ecological context.

Climate connects to everything and we hope you will have a chance to take a University of California (UC) Climate Stewards course to connect with others and organizations pursuing collective action in shared places. UC Climate Stewards focuses on climate literacy; field experiences in earth systems, water, energy, and agriculture; as well as communication training, community science, and service opportunities. Correspondingly, this book focuses on nature-based solutions that address impacts to ecosystems, water, agriculture, and energy and can be advanced by local communities.

We begin with the urgency to act that often follows extreme events. Then we move on to see how groups are building increased resilience through a variety of approaches, including where people of diverse backgrounds go outdoors to steward the land and the waters. We’ll meet others who are reconnecting the landscape on a large scale through ecosystems management and habitat corridors, as well as farmers and their neighbors who are supporting sustainable agricultural practices that can help to store carbon and save water. We’ll show you how communities living in forestlands are drawing on traditional ecological knowledge for forest health and trying to make the most of wood products while restoring habitat. You’ll learn how protecting unique desert ecosystems while capturing the Sun’s energy requires strategic planning and involves many players. California’s inner-city communities reveal how environmental justice is an essential front in the climate crisis and how local action improves neighborhoods and regenerates urban ecology. On the coast, we’ll meet ocean lovers fighting for intertidal ecosystems. Throughout it all, we’ll share how education and communication lay the foundation for collective actions that can build a more just and sustainable society.

Climate stewardship is a social movement that engages science, not a science that engages society. So, while we are proponents of scientific research and evaluation, we didn’t use a critical research lens to assess the project goals or outcomes shared by others; rather, our goal was to listen, interpret, and share in a way that is enjoyable, inspiring, and even amusing at times. There are many different groups leading the way and it’s impossible to cover them all. The stories in this book are but a few examples of the community actions underway in California and attempt to cover a wide range of geographies and voices, as well as a diversity of threats and solutions. These stories present timeless concepts and themes but are also a snapshot in time amid a rapidly changing world. Seeing is believing.

Acknowledgments

There are many people who helped make this book possible. We owe special thanks to Elizabeth Archer for being our logistical savior, Lou Doucette for her powerful line editing, Linda Gorman for her copyediting, Julie Van Pelt for being the project editor, Thérèse Shere for indexing, and Stacy Eisenstark for her editorial leadership. Russ Di Fiori, Kate Meadows, Greg Ira, Sarah-Mae Nelson, and Christina Sloop provided essential reviews and feedback. And thanks as well to Wendy Bingham, who appreciates the power of UC California Naturalists.

An amazing number of people provided insightful interviews, and many of them also provided photographs; others on this list suggested topics, connected us to experts, and provided reference and background material. We could not fit everything into the book, but everyone made an invaluable contribution. We owe a debt of gratitude to Joe Aguilar, Shelly Backlar, Christine Baker, Irvin Barragan, Cameron Barrows, Tracy Bartlett, BB, Renata Brillinger, Todd Brockman, Megan Brousseau, Susan Butler-Graham, Dylan Chapple, Jennifer Codron, Marian Coensgen, Alicia Cordero, Jennifer Cover, Ruth Dahlquist-Willard, Jim Danza, Nina Danza, Peter Day, David Diaz Avelar, Sabrina Drill, Alisa Duncan, Claire Elliot, Laura Engeman, Farrah Farzaneh, Jora Fogg, Ben Foster, Dora Frietze-Armenta, Brook Gamble, Michael Gillogly, Hilary Glann, Kristen Goodrich, Dave Graves, Morgan Gray, Greg Giusti, Cris Gutierrez, Justin Han, Mary Ellen Hannibal, Margaret Holub, Dan Harper, Susan Harrison, Erica Hart, Katharine Hayhoe, Tanya Henderson, Araceli Hernandez, Lila Higgins, Jaime Jahncke, Katherine Jarvis-Shean, Kevin Joe, Nathalie Johnson, Susie Kocher, Cathy Koehler, Carly Kupka, Janina Larenas, Sue Lebeck, Matthew Lewis, Ellen Lockert, Cindy Looy, Elissa Lynn, Andrew Madrigal, Sofia Maldonado Ramírez, David Mauk, Craig McNamara, Sean McNamara, Candice and Dino Meneghin, Lisa Micheli, Marina Mihailova, Veronica Miranda, Eileen Mitro, Max Moritz, Kirsten Mouradian, Ian Nelson, Sarah-Mae Nelson, James Oliver, Randall Osterhuber, Steve Ostoja, Katie Panarella, Jonathan Parfrey, John Parker, Margiana Petersen-Rockney, Greg Pierce, Ava Post Koo, Mary Powell, Sasha Rabin, Arjay Raffety, Judith Redmond, Claire Robinson, Laurette Rogers, Sarah Ryan, Russell Scofield, Susan Sher, Whendee Silver, Amy Southern, Erica Spotswood, KC Stover, Charles Striplen, Camille Swezy, Ka Tchieng, Morgan Tingley, Bill Tripp, Valeri Nicol Vasquez, Dave Wahl, Gary Ward, Jeannette Warnert, Laurie Wayburn, Jim Weigand, Lisa White, and Michael Yang.

Brendan would like to thank his wife, Stephanie, for her help and expertise, as well as his son, Jim, age four, for washing his grubby hands for 20 full seconds, every time. He would also like to thank his friend Eric Simons, who hates being thanked in books.

Adina would like to thank Kerry, Noah, and Ariella Heise for being the light of her life.

1

Extreme Events

Life in the New Normal

It was late on October 8, 2017, after a long, hot, dry day, when one of California’s greatest disasters struck: I locked my keys in the van.

Over a hundred UC California Naturalists had gathered for a Regional Rendezvous at Pepperwood Preserve in Sonoma County to do what people do at Pepperwood: observe nature, catch up on the latest environmental science, and share advice on land and water management. The preparations had started early that morning, with muffins and coffee put out and tall banners set up behind the registration table to direct the naturalists to the day’s activities. Michael Gillogly, Preserve Manager, warned that the banners might be blown down as the winds picked up later in the afternoon. It was a hot but pleasant day. We didn’t finish packing up until late in the evening, which is when I locked the keys in the van. After the tow truck driver retrieved the keys and we were on our way home, we smelled a hint of smoke and it was later still when Gillogly got a call from a neighbor. She smelled smoke, too.

Within minutes, Gillogly saw an orange glow in the eastern sky. A wall of fire was quickly approaching. While Gillogly rushed to secure the preserve’s vehicles and property, furious winds were driving the fire west at unprecedented speed. Suddenly an adjacent hill burst into flame, a towering inferno reaching into the treetops. It was clear Gillogly had to leave immediately. He and a neighbor drove along the small country road honking their horns to warn others. If we didn’t see lights turn on or anyone come out, we went up to the door. After his family departed in another vehicle and the neighbors were warned, Gillogly, along with two other vehicles, quickly departed. For the entire three miles to Calistoga Road, everything was on fire on both sides of us, he later recalled in a Pepperwood field note. All the houses, everything we passed, it was all burning. I could feel the heat inside my cab from the fire. Trees had fallen on the road, and in one stretch, rocks dislodged by the fire had rolled down a steep bank and were in the way. Luckily, we were able to get around all of those. My adrenaline was pumping as I dodged everything, and I had to keep my eyes on the road and go fast, but not so fast that I crashed and lost the opportunity to get out. Pretty soon we were through it.

He rejoined his family in Santa Rosa and fled south on Highway 101, another harrowing experience. The fire was already on the freeway and jumping over it. People had to get off by going down the on ramp the wrong way; it was the only way you could get out of there. The wind was blowing hard, burning embers were flying across the freeway, and the grass alongside the road was bursting into flames. It was just insane. Gillogly and his family lost their home on the preserve that night, as did many in the path of the Tubbs fire. Pepperwood’s rangelands were mostly burned over, although the main building was spared.

While Gillogly was trying to get himself and many others to safety that night, his boss, Lisa Micheli, president and CEO of Pepperwood Preserve, was sleeping soundly, having recently figured out how to silence her phone during the wee hours of the night. The next morning, she awoke to more than 60 messages. The first voicemail she played said that everyone was alive. Once the shock wore off, she was grateful that she got some sleep because she was going to need it. She had to assess the damage at Pepperwood and take care of the staff, neighbors, and larger community demanding information on what to do, from toxic waste to tree removal.

This fire was a game changer because many of the thousands of homes and businesses the fire destroyed were within the urban footprint of Santa Rosa. Now every autumn is tinged with dread for most Californians as part of a new normal. Since the fire, Micheli says, everyone in the Sonoma County environmental community has come together to learn what had happened to Pepperwood, other preserves, county and state parks, and many other special places that were devastated by the 2017 fires, and what each organization needed in order to provide the most help.

There are many nature lovers in the area who wanted to know what happened to the animals during the fire, and fortunately, Pepperwood stewards maintain a whole slew of wildlife cameras set up in a monitoring grid to record wildlife. Sure enough, the animals were there right after the fire, looking for food. That said, first responders reported seeing significant mortality along fence lines where animals had been trapped against the flames. Animals need safe passage across the landscape, especially when they are on the run. Pepperwood’s important camera monitoring plots provide information about wildlife before the fire. Scientists and volunteers can now use this information to investigate how the wildlife are recovering after the fire and to prepare for the next one, including adjusting fencing so wildlife can escape. What about the livestock that help Pepperwood keep the exotic grasses under control? They needed water and supplemental feed right away—additional things that communities need to be prepared to provide after a disaster such as this.

Even though we knew we are living and working in a fire-adapted landscape, we were still not prepared for this type of extreme event, Micheli says. Rural residential development spans across much of Sonoma and the surrounding counties. This type of wildland-urban interface is where 82 percent of damage to structures occurred in California from 1985 to 2013. Currently, a third of the homes in California are in the wildland-urban interface and require more comprehensive approaches to living in these increasingly fire-prone areas. Public preparedness can include towns identifying evacuation routes as well as dedicated safety zones where people can take refuge. Residents living in isolated areas with only one evacuation route can learn about sheltering in place and employ building strategies where life support systems, like water and temperature range, are maintained that allow people to survive.

Micheli and the rest of the Pepperwood staff have been pulled this way and that ever since the day after the fire. It started with how to determine how contaminated the surface water was from the huge number of toxins released into the air and across the land and what this meant for health and safety. Basic information like this had to be collected and distributed by Pepperwood and other nonprofit conservation groups in the area to protect the public.

A conservation working group came together in the aftermath of the fire to share information. The group did a lot of work, from figuring out how to measure air and water quality to writing guidelines on toxic waste removal and vegetation management. To prevent unnecessary tree loss, they got the word out to residents that it’s best to wait before cutting native trees down unless they pose an immediate safety concern. Many oak trees and other hardwoods that seem dead will resprout from the stump in the spring and grow into mature trees again.

What is going to make us the most adapted to climate change is having healthy ecosystems out there, Gillogly says. At Pepperwood there is ongoing work to promote more resilient landscapes, including forest thinning, grassland management through grazing, and removing unneeded fencing so that wildlife and livestock have a better chance of escaping the next fire. Land