Slideshow and Lecture by Brock Dolman, November 15

Article by Kate Marianchild

“Wild.” “Wildlife.” “Wilderness.” These words stir longing in many of us – a yearning for the time when humans lived in intimate connection with the rushing of wind and water, the rustle of foxes in the night, the rising and setting of celestial bodies. Seeking to renew that connection, we carry heavy backpacks into the mountains, re-finding our primal selves in landscapes largely unchanged by humans. We cherish our glimpses into the lives of wild animals, telling and retelling others about our sightings of eagles, bears, or beavers.

But the land right around us was pristine once also, and we can start renewing our connection with the wild right here at home. We can study our local landscapes and begin restoring them to a near-primeval state. Complete restoration is impossible, according to Brock Dolman, co-director of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center’s Wildlands Biodiversity Program and director of its WATER Institute, but tremendous improvements can be made.

The Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (OAEC) has been working for the past several years to recover 70 acres that were once heavily logged. Woodlands congested with small spindly trees are on their way to becoming stately and fire-resilient forests. Water that once roared through gullies and carried sediment into streams now flows across the surface and soaks into the land, recharging the water table. Tree frogs, snakes, and dragonflies are populating the edges of rainwater ponds. For those interested in learning how and why these changes have come about, Brock Dolman will deliver a slide lecture entitled “Trending to the Wild: Promoting Wildlands Biodiversity” on Thursday, November 15, at the Ukiah Civic Center, 7 p.m. This Peregrine Audubon Society program is free to the public, though donations will be gratefully accepted.

“Wildlife,” Dolman says, needs “Food, cover, water, and sex.” He suggests that a landowner or agency can start by figuring out what the bottleneck is for any target species. If water is in short supply, he will suggest measures to “slow it, spread it, and sink it.” In the process you may turn a seasonal creek back into a year-round creek or start dry springs flowing again. If a forest is so thick that Cooper's Hawks can’t hunt and deer can’t forage, you can thin the trees and turn the resultant debris into a “brush plug” at the top of a gully. The brush plug will slow rainwater run-off and provide cover for salamanders at the same time. If there are few nest cavities for Western Bluebirds and Oak Titmice, you can leave dead trees standing and put up nest boxes.

Dolman will teach us how to think about a piece of land, using OAEC’s program as a case study. He will offer hands-on, low-budget, site-specific methods for the restoration of water tables, wildlife, and plants. Some methods not yet mentioned include spot burning, replanting native bunch grasses, and digging contour swales. (The OAEC offers classes in some of these practices, such as one for landowners entitled “Facilitating Fire in the Landscape”).

Dolman will also touch on topics from his “Thinking Like a Watershed” lecture that he delivered to rapt Ukiah and Willits audiences in early October. In that talk Dolman explained that the demand for fresh water grows twice as fast as populations. He pointed out that everyone lives in a watershed, and that when watershed groups come together to conserve water and reduce erosion they are, in effect, building a lifeboat against the coming flood. With his ever-present humor he repeated his favorite mantra several times: “Planning is best done in advance.”

Brock Dolman is a thought-provoking speaker whose style is pragmatic, poetic, and often amusing. An ornithologist and wildlife biologist by training, Dolman is also a Sonoma County Fish & Wildlife Commissioner, a board member of the Russian River Watershed Council, an occasional advisor to various water control agencies, and a nationally recognized permaculture instructor and consultant. The work of Dolman and the OAEC has been so effective that the California Department of Forestry, the University of California, and the California Department of Fish and Game include the OAEC on their teaching-tour circuits. For more information about the OAEC’s programs go to www.oaec.org.

The Ukiah Civic Center is at 300 Seminary Avenue. From 101 take Perkins west to State Street (3rd light). Go left on State Street and turn right on Seminary Ave. Take Seminary to the end. To join Peregrine Audubon Society and receive a newsletter with regular announcements about programs and field trips, please send $15 to PAS, P.O. Box 311, Ukiah, CA 95482. www.peregrineaudubon.org.

Kate Marianchild, Writer/Publicist
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