WHAT WE DO
The Communities Regeneration Project includes researching, demonstrating, teaching, and practicing environmental protection and land regeneration, earth justice, and social justice with local and regional educational institutions and a community of volunteers.
Current Activities
Wildfire Mitigation
Protecting and restoring the environment:
Protecting the Colfax area forests and communities from wildfires coming out of the North Fork American River Canyon, involves working with Cal-fire, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Placer Resource Conservation District (RCD) and others to establish and maintain portions of the "North Fork American River Shaded Fuel Break". As its name implies, this is a state project to protect the forest to the East of Colfax California, & the adjacent I 80 corridor, and give firefighters a place to make a stand against future fires. In 2001 this ongoing effort allowed over 2000 firefighters a place to stage their attack on The Pondarosa Fire, likely saving the town of Colfax. There has been and continues to be extensive work on this project; including manual and machine thinning and brush cutting, as well as pile burning, broadcast burning, chipping, and forest raking. In addition to this work, CRP dedicates itself to restoring forest damaged by previous wildfires by planting trees and under-story species better adapted to current and future climate heating and drying.​​​​​​
Forest Transformation
Promoting carbon sequestration: As climate change weakens the existing conifers, we seek to transform our low-Sierra mixed conifer dominated forests to a more diverse mix of drought and heat resilient oaks, conifers, and under-story plants in order to help it respond to climate heating and drying. To do this we are aggressively thinning existing forests so that each tree has access to more soil moisture with emphasis on, selecting and retaining more climate resilient species and planting more climate resilient trees and under-story species. We are also planting more climate resilient trees and under-story species from lower elevations outside of our local area using a process called "assisted migration". We are just beginning trials in this area, and intend to expand our research and field trials in the future.
Education
We are fostering environmental justice and climate resilience through demonstration/education/training:
We give presentations on climate response and our CRP program to various local organizations such as churches, high schools, our local jr. college, and environmental clubs.
We also conduct on site demonstration and training events with these same organizations.
