All Land is Beautiful is a series of conversations around the obvious, and not so obvious, natural beauty of California and beyond. The motivation and nexus to start this podcast comes from an ever-evolving personal perspective shift on what contemporary habitat conservation means and looks like. You see, I, like I believe most people come to experience and perceive what’s good and bad for nature (at least the ones that I have interacted with) are of the mindset that the best we can do for nature is to simply remove ourselves from it and the natural of order of things will sort themselves out. You see a dense forest, you should leave it alone; you see a natural grassy field, well there certainly shouldn’t be any cows or sheep in it, and in that case why don’t we remove all of that old barbed-wire fencing; driving through huge swaths of agricultural land, jeez can you imagine what this all looked like before we turned it into row crops? And while those are all completely legitimate ideas and trains of thought, over the last several years of working throughout the Sacramento Valley and Sierra Nevada Foothills, I’ve come to find this whole thing is far more nuanced.
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All Land is Beautiful is a series of conversations around the obvious, and not so obvious, natural beauty of California and beyond. The motivation and nexus to start this podcast comes from an ever-evolving personal perspective shift on what contemporary habitat conservation means and looks like. You see, I, like I believe most people come to experience and perceive what’s good and bad for nature (at least the ones that I have interacted with) are of the mindset that the best we can do for nature is to simply remove ourselves from it and the natural of order of things will sort themselves out. You see a dense forest, you should leave it alone; you see a natural grassy field, well there certainly shouldn’t be any cows or sheep in it, and in that case why don’t we remove all of that old barbed-wire fencing; driving through huge swaths of agricultural land, jeez can you imagine what this all looked like before we turned it into row crops? And while those are all completely legitimate ideas and trains of thought, over the last several years of working throughout the Sacramento Valley and Sierra Nevada Foothills, I’ve come to find this whole thing is far more nuanced.
E22: The American River Headwaters Project: Part 1, with Alan Ehrgott
All Land is Beautiful
1 hour 7 minutes 32 seconds
4 months ago
E22: The American River Headwaters Project: Part 1, with Alan Ehrgott
This episode of the 'All Land is Beautiful' features the return of Alan Ehrgott, former executive director of the American River Conservancy, to unpack the complexities of a true conservation legacy story, the American River Headwaters Project. This initiative, spanning from 2010 to today, involved the $14 million conservation effort of protecting 10,115 acres of ecologically valuable land along the Sierra Nevada crest, which had previously been owned by an absentee logging company, within the headwaters of the American River. Our conversation delves into the multifaceted efforts of this project, including funding challenges, managing partnerships, and navigating legal and environmental hurdles. It highlights the effort and success of securing wilderness status for a third of the property, requiring extensive restoration and compliance with Wilderness Act standards.
Alan shares anecdotes about overcoming obstacles, such as discovering unforeseen mineral rights issues that nearly derailed the project and literally had to be resolved with a bag full of cash, the critical role of proactive management, public-private partnerships, and the importance of sustained conservation funding to protect such landscapes for future generations.
Note that this will be a two-part story. The sheer scale and breadth of the project, from acquisition to several years of forest restoration, is simply too much to cover in just one interview. Stay tuned for part 2 with ARC’s Forest Restoration manager, Autumn Gronborg, where we’ll dive into the nitty gritty of the forest restoration efforts that ensued for years after acquiring the project, and that Alan and I barely touch the surface on in this conversation.
All Land is Beautiful
All Land is Beautiful is a series of conversations around the obvious, and not so obvious, natural beauty of California and beyond. The motivation and nexus to start this podcast comes from an ever-evolving personal perspective shift on what contemporary habitat conservation means and looks like. You see, I, like I believe most people come to experience and perceive what’s good and bad for nature (at least the ones that I have interacted with) are of the mindset that the best we can do for nature is to simply remove ourselves from it and the natural of order of things will sort themselves out. You see a dense forest, you should leave it alone; you see a natural grassy field, well there certainly shouldn’t be any cows or sheep in it, and in that case why don’t we remove all of that old barbed-wire fencing; driving through huge swaths of agricultural land, jeez can you imagine what this all looked like before we turned it into row crops? And while those are all completely legitimate ideas and trains of thought, over the last several years of working throughout the Sacramento Valley and Sierra Nevada Foothills, I’ve come to find this whole thing is far more nuanced.
