Help Care for Land and Water
What happens on the property you care for affects the health of the entire Valley, its wildlife, and the region’s resilience to fire and drought.
Sonoma Ecology Center's Restoration team brings science-based land management practices to protect habitat, water quality, and biodiversity. We assist owners of land of all sizes, helping reduce wildfire risk, restore habitat, and make land management decisions grounded in science.
Beyond direct restoration services, we offer ways to learn alongside us, through workshops and online resources, so you can build the skills to tend your own land for years to come.
We also organize community creek cleanups and work to build awareness and increase access to creeks that need care.
Shortcuts
Manage Land for Multiple Benefits
An ecologically informed approach to caring for the land begins with understanding how it functions. Ecologically informed land management supports healthier soils, cleaner water, native habitat, and more resilient landscapes. Reducing wildfire fuels using ecological best practices can also improve forest health, protect nearby communities, and reduce sediment flowing into creeks after fire.
Explore the resources below to learn best practices, or work with our Restoration professionals to develop solutions tailored to your property and stewardship goals.
Land Services For Hire
Our trained restoration professionals provide ecological restoration and land stewardship services for landowners across the North Bay. Services include:
Biological site assessments
Native plant seed collection and propagation
Invasive plant mapping and treatment
Streambank stabilization and erosion control
Fire fuel management informed by ecological best practices
We assist owners with lands of all sizes. To schedule a consultation, please fill out the Land Services Request Intake Form and email pictures of your property to restoration@sonomaecologycenter.org.
Tending the Land for Fire Resilience in Sonoma County
Tending the Land for Fire Resilience in Sonoma County is a guide for anyone living or working in Sonoma County interested in stewarding land to achieve a variety of goals, from developing fire resilience to conserving water, enhancing wildlife habitat, and more.
The website informs and empowers land stewards of all kinds:
Landowners and landowner groups
Volunteers, tenants, and community members who help care for open space lands
Professionals, especially early-career or transitioning professionals
The guide presents knowledge from numerous Sonoma County experts and makes it accessible. Tending the Land helps you understand, plan, and execute land stewardship practices in the wider landscape beyond defensible space.
Resilient Landscapes Coalition
The Resilient Landscapes Coalition provides practical information to homeowners and landscape professionals on implementing defensible, wildlife-friendly, beautiful, and resilient landscapes in the 0-100-foot zone around the home, based on the best scientific research and gardening expertise.
Workshops
We offer gardening and land stewardship workshops throughout the year at Sonoma Garden Park and through Tending the Land and Resilient Landscapes Coalition.
Creek Pollution and Cleanups
Sonoma Creek is one of our valley’s most precious resources—and it needs our help.
Because the majority of the creek and its tributaries are not visible from bridges and other public access points, the level of pollution occurring in our watershed goes unnoticed.
We made this video to offer a closer look at the threats facing the Sonoma Creek Watershed, the restoration work Sonoma Ecology Center is doing to address them, and how landowners, volunteers, and neighbors can get involved.
Keeping our watershed healthy isn’t just one person’s job—it takes all of us.
-
Creek monitoring, habitat restoration, and community cleanups depend on private support. Your contribution helps Sonoma Ecology Center protect the watershed year-round.
-
Debris along creek banks get swept downstream during storms. Join our volunteer cleanup list and help keep Sonoma Creek healthy with seasonal community creek cleanups.
-
Giving Sonoma Ecology Center staff and volunteers access to your creekside parcel allows us to assess reaches of the watershed that would otherwise go unaddressed.