News

NEW: EXPANDED HOURS! Come to the SRT Dry Creek Nursery Winter Native Plant Sale at SRT Dry Creek Preserve Saturday, Dec. 11 from 9-2. See you there, rain or shine!

The Official Giving Tuesday Community Campaign in Tulare County #GiveWhereYouLiveTC!

Join us at Kaweah Oaks Preserve on November 13th to learn how to make a positive impact!

(VISALIA, CA) - It’s rare that a major ad agency like the legendary Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) calls seeking collaboration with a Tulare County-based nonprofit like Sequoia Riverlands Trust (SRT). Rare to almost never, that is. Worldwide DDB clients like McDonald’s and Miller Brewing more typically inhabit DDB’s domain, among a client roster including numerous international conglomerates, institutions, and major consumer brands.

A discussion on agricultural impacts and strategies related to climate change. This discussion will also include an overview of climate smart tools available to assist farmers and ranchers. This Climate Smart Agriculture Webinar Series is a joint collaboration between the California Department of Food and Agriculture and The Western Cape Department of Agriculture. The intent of this series is connect farmers/ranchers, academia and government representatives in both countries to engage on shared climate challenges.

Public meeting July 21, 2021, on the Kaweah Groundwater Subbasin Regional Conservation Investment Strategy (Kaweah RCIS). Hosted by the East Kaweah Groundwater Sustainability Agency.

For an inside look at our lands and our mission, check out South Valley Reporter Brian Johnson's coverage of SRT preserves in this "Hidden Adventures" segment!

Annual Fire Season Closure for SRT's Homer Ranch Preserve

Join us for this fun, educational, inclusive celebration and socially distanced version of Go Native, which returns to Kaweah Oaks Preserve May 15.

OUTside Pride returns to Kaweah Oaks Preserve for a day of fun, environmental service, and community, welcoming Tulare County's LGBTQ+ Community. Join us - and please register for the event via the Eventbrite link on the flyer!

Come and join us for a Discovery Day at Blue Oak Ranch Preserve! We only open the preserve to the public on the first Saturday of every month. There will be opportunities for restoration work as well as exploration and hiking around the preserve. We are respecting COVID-19 guidelines that are set forth in local mandates by requiring masks and social distancing at events. We will provide masks and gloves for those who do not have them.

Come volunteer at our Native Plant Nursery! We have a volunteer day on the first and third Fridays of every month. We are respecting COVID-19 guidelines that are set forth in local mandates by requiring masks and social distancing at events. We will provide masks and gloves for those who do not have them.

Come out and help us maintain and restore Kaweah Oaks Preserve! We have a volunteer day on the third Saturday of every month. We are respecting COVID-19 guidelines that are set forth in local mandates by requiring masks and social distancing at events. We will provide masks and gloves for those who do not have them.

Come out and discover nature through photography. You don't need special camera gear to find and capture the beauty of spring at Homer Ranch.

Dear SRT Family,

As we move closer to a new year, the leaves of the sycamores in the rare alluvial woodland at Homer Ranch Preserve have turned a deep rust-brown. On a national level, we are preparing for a new President and Vice President. And with the beginning of vaccine distribution, we look forward to a time when we will be able to safely gather again with family and friends.

Sequoia Riverlands Trust is also entering a season of transition. So many challenges lie ahead, including groundwater and climate issues, shifting land use policies, and the need to raise the next generation of naturalists and farmers. SRT has assessed its leadership needs as we prepare to meet these challenges.

To help move us toward our vision, the SRT Board has named Scott Spear as Acting Executive Director. Scott has a 20-year history with SRT, which, combined with his experience as a farmer, uniquely positions him as a bridge to our future leadership. As the founding chairman of SRT’s Board, Scott was instrumental in the creation of our organization. As Acting Executive Director, he will work closely with a team of senior staff and the Board of Directors as SRT continues its critical conservation, education, policy, and land management work.

We begin the search for a new Executive Director from a place of strength and stability, firmly rooted in our mission to inspire love and lasting protection for important lands. We are committed to our vision of a future where productive farmland and healthy natural systems are protected to generate community vitality and economic prosperity.

SRT is so grateful for the strong support of our volunteers, staff, ambassadors, and donors. Your support has made us the robust and vital land trust we are today, and your continuing commitment will ensure the future of SRT’s work. Our preserves at Kaweah Oaks, Homer Ranch, and Dry Creek are open to the public, and we encourage you to visit and enjoy the beauty and respite of nature in this holiday season. For more information, contact info@sequoiariverlands.org.

We hope to see you outside in 2021!
Sincerely,

Mike Olmos
Board President
Sequoia Riverlands Trust

MORE great gardening weather is in store! And just in time for SRT Dry Creek Nursery's December Plant Sale, with fantastic deals up to 75% OFF! Come on out Saturday, Dec. 12 and please bring your masks -- and remember that we're all following social distancing protocols. Come out and fill your garden with native drought-resistant plants.

Want to positively impact environment? Want to join others whose values you share? Join our volunteer effort at SRT preserves and make a difference!

WOW!! Is this some great gardening weather or what! And just in time for SRT Dry Creek Nursery's Fall Plant Sale, with fantastic deals up to 75% OFF! Come on out this Saturday, and please bring your masks and remember that we're all following social distancing protocols. Come out and fill your garden with native drought-resistant plants.

(LEMON COVE, CA) - Sequoia Riverlands Trust has announced the annual weekends-only reopening of its Homer Ranch Preserve near Lemon Cove, effective November 1. With some precipitation in the forecast, SRT conservation staff agreed to reopen the preserve on schedule given the potential relief from the ongoing dry conditions. SRT closes Homer Ranch each year from June through October due to fire danger.

"We hope visitors will enjoy their visits to Homer Ranch Preserve while being mindful of the surrounding conditions. Report any unusual situations and remember that some cellular providers do not offer coverage at the preserve," said Aaron Collins, SRT Director of Marketing and Communications. Additionally, be mindful that Homer Ranch is a working cattle ranch, and remember that while rattlesnakes and other preserve residents are preparing for the winter, the longer warm season means they may remain active later than has historically been the case. Bring water, wear hats and long pants, and enjoy the scenery!

This Executive Summary is a more in-depth companion piece to the SRT-produced video, SRT and Public Lands: California's Nature for All. See the video here: https://vimeo.com/469138924/820e02edce

A brief statement from SRT Executive Director Cam Tredennick on racial justice and the conservation field.

Dry Creek Nursery Plant Sale Feb. 22

Join SRT Education Coordinator Sam Weiser and the SRT team for a fun day exploring nature, trail maintenance, and planting native species around the Blue Oak Ranch pond. Afterward, great minds will think “a hike” and visitors can hit the trail for a guided walk around the preserve. All ages are welcome!

Blue Oak Ranch Preserve
ENTRANCE A
40865 Harris Rd.
Springville, CA

Want to explore your passion for nature?

Join SRT Education Coordinator Sam Weiser and the SRT team for a fun day exploring nature and learning about the living organisms that call Blue Oak Ranch Preserve home!

SRT receives national accreditation renewal

Join us this summer!

Due to a prescribed burn, Kaweah Oaks Preserve will be CLOSED today, Wednesday May 15, 2019.

Hands-on activity booths from Arts Visalia, Sequoia National Park, a fire truck from Cal Fire, PBS's Nature Cat, and many other attractions including nature itself make this free event a must-do for families and anyone interested in the emerging practice of citizen science. Come on out this Saturday, April 27, 10-1 and join the fun!

9 am Coffee & doughnuts
9:30 Help improve Kaweah Oaks Preserve with supervised projects for all abilities
Noon - FREE barbecue

Join SRT Education Coordinator Sam Weiser and the SRT team help you observe and understand the natural world around you! Expect lots of wildflowers plus snacks at noon. Come on out and experience Blue Oak Ranch Preserve!

Bird watching, bird phenology, good people, good times!

(LEMON COVE, CA) - SRT has announced that Homer Ranch Preserve near Lemon Cove will reopen for the winter season. The weekends-only schedule resumes Nov. 3 -- once fire season has subsided. "Although fire season in California is now considered an annual one, we feel that granting access to this treasure is an important part of appreciating our important lands and what makes them valuable," said Soapy Mulholland, SRT President & CEO. "We ask that visitors carefully read and observe the posted rules and use every precaution to help avoid fire and keep this vital landscape and cattle ranch in good shape."

For more information about Homer Ranch, see our web page:

https://sequoiariverlands.org/what-you-can-do-see/homer-ranch.html

Great fall weather just in time for GREAT DEALS! Come on out to the SRT Dry Creek Plant Nursery FALL PLANT SALE this Saturday from 9-1. We'll be following mask and social distancing protocols, so please join us in helping to stop the pandemic.

SRT has known for some time that Kaweah Oaks Preserve's topography makes it a natural site for water storage, and it's location between the Kaweah Dam and downstream farmers also makes it a great site to park water. Now that this winter has provided a lot of rain, we'll be able to do just that thanks to a new partnership with Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District.

KDWCD needs somewhere to put water as Kaweah Lake and the Friant-Kern Canal are full. KOP can be that place with only a little bit of work. So soon you will see KDWCD earth movers and other equipment near the Fitness Trail and up to the Sycamore Trail, working with naturally occurring landscape features to create a place for water to stay for a few months.

We hope the water storage will not only help the district and nearby farmers, but also will recharge KOP's groundwater levels, which have been dropping with the drought along with other changes to the natural hydrology of the Preserve due to flood control projects and agricultural needs. That will help keep trees and other native species alive and healthy. That's why we see this project as a win for everyone.

Eventually, KDWCD could create more water storage locations at KOP, requiring some changes to the western edge of the preserve. But for now the changes will be minimal. Look for pools of lovely, useful, much-needed water forming at KOP soon!

SRT will have plants for sale and can answer your questions about native and drought-tolerant landscaping at the Arts Visalia Artscape tour HQ this Saturday. We'll be in Arts Visalia's back yard with all the other vendors and sponsors. See you there from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m.

Kaweah Oaks Preserve reopens to visitors; Sycamore Trail remains closed indefinitely.

SRT's Ann Huber Huber speaks with military reporters from the U.S. Army's 368th Public Affairs Detachment, based in Chicago.

Go Native will be held at Mooney Grove for 2016. The event will return to Kaweah Oaks in 2017.

Our once-a-year wildflower walk at Lewis Hill has been changed to Friday, March 18, due to the potential for rain the previous weekend. Open only to SRT members, this walk will showcase rare and protected wildflowers found in very few locations around the south Valley. SRT's Stewardship Director Ann Huber will lead the walk up the hill, pointing out the natural beauty the spring wildflowers give to the hill. Participants can help do a survey of where the Adobe Sunburst is blooming this year, too.
If you'd like to come, please RSVP to Marilyn or Diane at 559-738-0211. On walk day, you'll need to wear long pants, a hat, and closed-toe boots, due to tall grass and the rattlesnakes that may be living there.

Congratulations to the 2016 Aldo Leopold Conservation Award winners, Jim and Mary Rickert of Shasta County. These cattle ranchers show how working with nature makes for better food and a better world for us all.
SRT Executive Director Soapy Mulholland was one of the judges for the award again this year.

If you want to spend more time outside this year, consider volunteering with SRT at one of our preserves. We have oodles of dates planned at Kaweah Oaks, Dry Creek and Blue Oak Ranch preserves. Check out our calendar for the dates and times that work for you.

Thank you for being a part of Sequoia Riverlands Trust this year. We hope you made it out to one of our preserves, if not just to spend time in nature, then on a hike, a field trip, or for Evening Under the Oaks. Here's a look back at the year in photos - enjoy!

We here at SRT have always known Kaweah Oaks Preserve is a wonderful, magical place - but according to this recent visitor, it might be THE best place in the world. Check out this video.

Arts Visalia asked SRT to be a part of their fall fundraiser, Artscapes: New Garden Visions for a Waterwise Visalia, and we were thrilled to help out. We fully support using native and drought-tolerant plants in place of lawns, and our Native Plant Nursery offers many beautiful species for sale.
So from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 14, we'll be a part of the garden tour, which features five VIsalia homes that ditched the lawn for natural beauty. plus the city's demonstration garden. After the tour, we'll have a plant sale at the nursery, at our Dry Creek Preserve, from 1-4 p.m. If you get your Artscapes program stamped at each site, you'll get 5 percent off your nursery purchases with each stamp - up to 30 percent!
To purchase an Artscapes ticket, contact Arts Visalia at 559-739-0905.
You can read more about the event and one of the homes on the tour in this month's Lifestyle magazine - there's also a story about our Evening Under the Oaks event from earlier this October.

“…the most useful and influential people [in America] are those who take the deepest interest in institutions that exist for the purpose of making the world better.”

“An attitude of gratitude creates blessings. Help yourself by helping others.”

“As the purse is emptied the heart is filled.”

“Charity begins at home but should not end there.”

“Charity is a supreme virtue, and the great channel through which the mercy of God is passed on to mankind. It is the virtue that unites men and inspires their noblest efforts.”

“Difficult things we do quickly. The impossible takes a little longer.”

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.”

“Everyone can be great, because everyone can serve.”

“Generosity is the flower of justice.”

“How wonderful it is that nobody needs to wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

“I absolutely believe in the power of tithing and giving back. My own experience about all the blessings I've had in my life is that the more I give away, the more that comes back. That is the way life works, and that is the way energy works.”

“I choose to rise up out of that storm and see that in moments of desperation, fear, and helplessness, each of us can be a rainbow of hope, doing what we can to extend ourselves in kindness and grace to one another. And I know for sure that there is no them there's only us.”

“I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.”

“I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”

“I think the great livers, the people who are fully self-actualizing and alive, are the great givers.”

“I will continue to distribute blankets, sleeping bags, warm clothing and food on a regular basis, in the hope that my modest efforts will give some comfort to those people we are able help.”

“If you think of life as like a big pie, you can try to hold the whole pie and kill yourself trying to keep it, or you can slice it up and give some to the people around you, and you still have plenty left for yourself.”

“If you want to change the world, be that change.”

“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.”

“In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.”

“It is every man's obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.”

“It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself… Serve and thou shall be served.”

“Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.”

“Life begets life. Energy becomes energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.”

“Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back by becoming more.”

“Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.”

“No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.”

“Not he who has much is rich but he who gives much.”

“One must know not just how to accept a gift, but with what grace to share it.”

“One of the great movements in my lifetime among educated people is the need to commit themselves to action. Most people are not satisfied with giving money; we also feel we need to work.”

“Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind.”

“Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.”

“Seek always to do some good somewhere. You must give some time to your fellow man. For remember, you don’t live in a world all your own.”

“Social advance depends quite as much upon an increase in moral sensibility as it does upon a sense of duty.”

“The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.”

“The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.”

“The highest use of capital is not to make more money but to make money do more for the betterment of life.”

“The progress of the world will call for the best that all of us have to give.”

“The raising of extraordinarily large sums of money, given voluntarily and freely by millions of our fellow Americans, is a unique American tradition... Philanthropy, charity, giving voluntarily and freely... call it what you like, but it is truly a jewel of an American tradition.”

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

“There is no cause half so sacred as the cause of a people. There is no idea so uplifting as the idea of the service of humanity.”

“There's no substitute for rolling up your sleeves and working with the people who can make a difference. They get the benefit of your participation and you gain a direct understanding of the real problems and potential solutions, which makes you a more informed giver.”

“They who give have all the things. They who withhold have nothing.”

“Think of giving not only as a duty but as a privilege.”

“We are responsible for the world in which we find ourselves, if only because we are the only sentient force that can change it.”

“We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.”

“When it comes to helping out, I don’t believe in doing it for the media attention. My goal is to support the organizations that need help.”

“When you stop giving and offering something to the rest of the world, it's time to turn out the lights.”

“You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.”