LandPaths' Riddell Fire Resiliency

2021 - 2024

Welcome

LandPaths' Riddell Preserve is a 400-acre nature sanctuary located five miles northwest of Healdsburg, California. It is not open to the public but LandPaths maintains an active stewardship program that annually engages hundreds of community members to take care of the land. 

Building resilience to wildfire is our top stewardship priority at Riddell. Over half of the Preserve burned in the 2020 Walbridge Fire and climate change is making wildfires both more frequent and more intense. This Storymap illustrates our efforts build fire resilience together with the community between 2021 and 2024. It provides a close-up perspective on what it takes to reduce fuel loads and improve habitat through people-powered actions.  

We invite you to explore our fire resilience journey with us. We’ve highlighted the fire fuel reduction work that we’ve done and some of our other activities at Riddell, such as our wildlife camera trap program and our Charlie Brown Tree event that engages the community in our efforts to thin Douglas fir saplings from the forest by harvesting small trees for the holidays.  

About Riddell Preserve

Riddell Preserve is located in the Dry Creek watershed in an ecologically diverse landscape surrounded by California’s wine country. Its topography is made up of steep ridges alternating with riparian drainages, rock outcrops, meadows, redwood groves, chaparral, and hardwood forests. The preserve was donated to LandPaths in 2007 by the Riddell family for conservation purposes. Learn more about the history of Riddell  here 

Riddell Preserve is located on the ancestral home of the Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians, past, present, and future. We recognize them as the first people and the first stewards of this land. We are on occupied territory and acknowledge the ongoing devastation of colonization.  

Our Stewardship Approach

Our goal is to create a healthy matrix of habitat types including California mixed –conifer and hardwood forests, oak woodlands, chapparal, riparian forests, and grasslands. These healthy habitat types feature a diversity of native trees and shrubs, forbs, grasses, and fungi. Healthy habitats support diverse animal populations and sustained ecosystem processes.  

Like most ecosystems in California, the native habitats at Riddell Preserve evolved with regular fire. In addition to wildfire sparked by lightning, fire was regularly used by indigenous people to maintain the productivity of forests, woodlands, and grasslands. In recent decades, however, land management decisions have favored fire suppression which has led to a build-up of fuel on the landscape. Combined with climate change, this fuel build-up has led to more severe wildfires such as those seen in Sonoma County since 2017.

Our stewardship approach is to counteract this fuel buildup through a four-step process known as “Slow Restoration Forestry.” Through a process of assessment and a graduated series of actions, some vegetation is removed or “thinned” so that the remaining vegetation is able to thrive. The goal is to decrease the risk of a catastrophic crown fire while leaving plenty of habitat for wildlife.  

Stewardship Methods

We complete the following stages of forest stewardship work to create healthy forest ecosystems.

Stage 0: Planning. This stage involves site visits in order to map project sites and identify key plants, hazards, and habitat features.

Stage 1: Community Stewardship. This first pass through the forest involves a level of plant identification and plant removal that can be taught quickly to staff, volunteers, young stewards, and youth. This stage focuses on the removal of the most prolific plants (namely Douglas fir and French broom). This stage removes a substantial portion of woody debris and increases access to specific plants that will be removed in the next two stages. We use handsaws, loppers, and weed wrenches to accomplish our goals in this stage.

Stage 2: Focused Staff Stewardship. This stage involves a more targeted removal of live trees, hazard trees, and logs that are larger than 2" but smaller than 10" in diameter, focusing primarily on Douglas fir. We use chainsaws, pole saws, and other power tools to remove vegetation at this stage.

Stage 3: Experienced Community Stewardship. Once invasive species and larger fuels are removed, this stewardship stage focuses on the conscientious removal of dead or hazardous materials from some of our cherished native plants including black oak, coast live oak, valley oak, toyon, madrone, huckleberry, and other native shrubs and trees. During this step, staff and experienced volunteers work towards more specific habitat and ecosystem goals. We use hand saws and loppers at this stage to accomplish our goals.

Stage 4: Removal. During this stage, we create burn piles from the down and gathered woody debris. Staff and volunteer stewards burn debris piles using safe and ecologically sustainable practices. The combination of vegetation removal and burn piles imitates the effects of a low-intensity wildfire. We use loopers, McLeods, rakes, shovels, water backpacks, and drip torches to light and manage burn piles.

All of our forest stewardship work is possible with efforts from many community members, foundations, volunteer groups, corporate groups, and staff members.

Grants: Healdsburg Rotary Club Donation, California State Coastal Conservancy, Sonoma Ecology Center Wildfire Resilience Program (funded by the State Coastal Conservancy), California State Parks, California Fire Foundation.

Volunteer Groups: Healdsburg Rotary Clubs, Jackson Family Wines, SRJC Environmental Class, Kelsi Anderson (Wild Earth Art).

Volunteer Hours: Since 2021, over 200 volunteers have dedicated over 1500 hours to forest stewardship at our Riddell Preserve.

Staff: Over 40 current and previous LandPaths staff have contributed valuable time towards Riddell's fire resiliency.

Interactive Legend

Visit Our Forestry Sites!

Workshop 1

Workshop 2

Workshop 3

Workshop 6

Workshop 4

Workshop 7

Workshop 5

Douglas Fir Felling Demo

French Broom Removal

French Broom Removal

Broomapulooza closing

Broomapulooza Opening

Burn Piles

Burn Piles

Broom Removal

Doug Fir Removal

Burn Pile

Workshop 1

Stages 1 - 4

One of the stewardship sites for the 2023 Slow Restoration Forestry Workshop. Stewardship tasks included the felling of Douglas Fir, the removal of French Broom, and the trimming of dead branches from oaks, bays, and madrones.

Workshop 2

Stage 1 - 4

One of the stewardship sites for the 2023 Slow Restoration Forestry Workshop. Stewardship tasks included the felling of Douglas fir, the removal of French broom, and the trimming of dead branches from oaks, bays, and madrones.

Workshop 3

Stage 1 - 4

One of the stewardship sites for the 2023 Slow Restoration Forestry Workshop. Stewardship tasks included the felling of Douglas fir, the removal of French broom, and the trimming of dead branches from oaks, bays, and madrones.

Workshop 6

Stage 1 - 4

One of the stewardship sites for the 2023 Slow Restoration Forestry Workshop. Stewardship tasks included the felling of Douglas fir, the removal of French broom, and the trimming of dead branches from oaks, bays, and madrones.

Workshop 4

Stages 1 - 4

One of the stewardship sites for the 2023 Slow Restoration Forestry Workshop. Stewardship tasks included the felling of Douglas fir, the removal of French broom, and the trimming of dead branches from oaks, bays, and madrones.

Workshop 7

Stages 1- 4

One of the stewardship sites for the 2023 Slow Restoration Forestry Workshop. Stewardship tasks included the felling of Douglas fir, the removal of French broom, and the trimming of dead branches from oaks, bays, and madrones.

Workshop 5

Stages 1 - 4

One of the stewardship sites for the 2023 Slow Restoration Forestry Workshop. Stewardship tasks included the felling of Douglas fir, the removal of French broom, and the trimming of dead branches from oaks, bays, and madrones.

Douglas Fir Felling Demo

LandPaths staff member leads young stewards in the felling of a Douglas fir tree. This was part of the 2023 Slow Restoration Forestry Workshop. Stage 1 is demonstrated in this photo.

French Broom Removal

Stage 1

This French broom removal was part of a volunteer stewardship day in the fall of 2023.

French Broom Removal

Stage 1 .

This French broom removal was part of a volunteer stewardship day in the fall of 2022.

Broomapulooza closing

Stage 4.

This French broom removal was part of the Broomapulooza event in the spring of 2024. French Broom piles were placed in the shape of a large flower to create landscape art.

Broomapulooza Opening

Stage 1

This French broom removal was part of the Broomapulooza event in the spring of 2024. French Broom piles were placed in the shape of a large flower to create landscape art.

Burn Piles

Stage 4

This burn pile was created and burned on a volunteer day in the spring of 2022.

Burn Piles

Stage 4.

This burn pile was created and burned on a volunteer day in the spring of 2022

Broom Removal

Stage 1

This French broom was removed as part of a volunteer day in the spring of 2022.

Doug Fir Removal

Stage 1

Young stewards and volunteers felled Douglas fir trees during a volunteer event in the spring of 2022.

Burn Pile

Stage 4.

Staff members created and burned woody debris under a beautiful old oak in the spring of 2024.

Community Events

Forest stewardship requires input from our communities and friends. In order to encourage forest stewardship, we first had to create communities of members eager to get outdoors and take care of the land

Charlie Brown Tree Harvest (2021,2022,2023)

This annual event engages the community in the removal of Douglas fir trees. Our community members get to take home their prized tree.

Charlie Brown Tree Harvest 2024

Forestry Workshop (Fall 2023)

In the fall of 2023, Stewardship Specialist Lara O'Herlihy led an 18-hour workshop series focused on slow-restoration forestry and community.

Learn more on our blog:

Broomapulooza Campaign (February - March 2024)

In the spring of 2024, we launched the Broomapullooza event series. During this serries, we removed invasive French broom plants and redesigned broom into an ephemeral art installation. This art was designed by Kelsi Anderson of Wild Earth Art.

Corporate Groups

Over the past three years, we've maintained a stewardship relationship with corporate and volunteer groups. Thank you to Jackson Family Wines and the Rotary clubs of Healdsburg!

Wildlife

Our forest stewardship contributed to wildlife visits to Riddell Preserve. Forest stewardship creates more habitat feature diversity, creates wildlife corridors, and gives access to more diverse plant species. As captured by our 2024 wildlife camera pilot study, many wildlife species make use of stewarded forests and only a few make use of dense non-stewarded forest areas.

Species from Left to Right: mountain lion, turkey, striped skunk, grey fox, mountain lion, dusky-footed woodrat, opossum, mule deer, gray squirrel.

Wildlife Presence Data (May - June 2024)

Camera Background Information

  • RF1 - Placed near an untreated large patch of French broom. This camera filled up with photos of French broom and no data from this camera is shown above.
  • RF2 - Placed near a woodrat house and a dense thicket of Douglas fir and French broom.
  • RF3 - Placed near a well-maintained flat trail. Forest thinning was conducted on both sides of the trail
  • RF4 - Placed in a clearing in a forest patch thinned in the 2023-2024 forestry season.
  • RF5- Placed in a clearing in a forest patch thinned in the 2023-2024 forestry season. This camera was facing a woodrat house located at a distance of 30 feet.
  • RF6 - Placed on top of a man-made "critter cavern", facing another larger "critter cavern". This area was thinned in the 2023-2024 foresty season.