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Celebrating 30 years! Little Black Mountain Preserve turns 30
Commemorating Nefertierra
We need you!
Click here for a full schedule of upcoming outings From farm to table — a tasty adventure
Everybody profits from climate defense
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May 2009
You matched it! Thank YOU for being so generous. Your donations helped raise more than $200,000 to match The San Francisco Foundation’s $100,000 grant. This outpouring of support will keep our projects moving forward during these challenging times to ensure that the natural beauty of our county is protected — today and for generations to come. We are grateful for your extraordinary generosity.
Chance to hike at the Estero Americano
For more information, click here
“Frogs and Fences” at the Baylands
Enjoy the Frogs and Fences video
Vicarious pleasures If you attend an SLT hike or other event, feel free to share your experience with the rest of us by posting to the SLT Facebook page. We want to hear from you! (You can post photos, too.)
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| Questions or comments? Email Sheri Cardo, managing editor. Copyright 2009 Sonoma Land Trust. All Rights Reserved. Newsletter produced by Athena Design Group. |
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SLT staff, caretakers, volunteers and guests all gathered last Friday to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Thieriot family’s gift of the 500-acre Little Black Mountain Preserve to the Sonoma Land Trust. The party and hike included a tour of SLT’s stewardship activities, tales of LBM history, birthday cake, champagne and a toast to “30 years — the beginning of perpetuity.”
In 1979, Sue Manuel Smith donated a conservation easement over her 78-acre property, known as Nefertierra, to SLT — setting into motion 30 years of hiking, botanizing and collaborative stewardship activities on her land. In April, Sue hosted a hike to celebrate the anniversary of the easement. SLT’s staff hit the trail, along with Joan Vilms, who drafted the easement, Jeanette Barekman, the property’s lead monitor, and Daphne Smith, a longtime SLT supporter. We are incredibly grateful for Sue’s gift and her decades of dedicated stewardship.
Join a trail maintenance hike and picnic lunch at SLT’s Laufenburg Ranch in Knights Valley, outside Healdsburg, on Friday, May 29, from 10am–2pm. Come explore the historic ranch and help clear encroaching brush from a scenic trail loop. Located at the base of Mount St. Helena, this beautiful 176-acre, turn-of-the-century farm was bequeathed to SLT in 1987 by the late Charles Laufenburg. For those who wish, a carpool will depart from Santa Rosa at 9:30am. For more information or to sign up, please call (707) 544-5614 ext. 2 or email: 
The soft rain was no deterrent — some 20 SLT members showed up at 365-acre Shone Farm in Forestville last week for a tour of SRJC’s sustainable farm led by renowned organic farmers Leonard Diggs and Heidi Hermann. What a place! What an endeavor! After rambling through the fields, we then drove to downtown Santa Rosa to enjoy a beyond-delicious meal at the JC’s Culinary Cafe, which incorporates vegetables and fruits from Shone Farm into its daily offerings, such as the delightful Asparagus Wellington with Basil Cream Sauce and Sauteed Spring Vegetables — so fresh, it was like eating springtime! 
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, not even the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” So said Charles Darwin and climate change may well be the test. At the 5th annual conference last week put on by the Sonoma County-based Climate Protection Campaign, we learned that it’s climate adaptation that is our current challenge — because climate change is already here. Keynote speaker L. Hunter Lovins of Natural Capital Solutions provided a powerful case for how businesses can profit by reducing their carbon footprint. 
