Weekends on a school campus are usually quiet, but some Saturdays are different. This spring, UC ANR hosted two sessions of California Tree School in Butte and Humboldt counties, and all sorts of visitors— forest landowner families, California Conservation Corps members, local wildfire resilience advocates, nonprofit employees— strolled onto campuses for a day of education in forestry, fire, and related subjects like nature journaling and wood-fired ceramics.
Since 2023, UC ANR’s Forest Stewardship team has hosted two CA Tree Schools annually in different locations across the state. Each Tree School functions as a mini-college specializing in forest stewardship, where attendees take classes on forest insects, oak woodland management, or using prescribed fire. The event is one facet of UC ANR’s Forest Stewardship Education Initiative; a program that empowers and incentivizes private landowners to manage their forestland.
CA Tree School casts a wider net than typical Forest Stewardship programming, and draws college students, nonprofit volunteers, forestry professionals, and casual learners to hear trusted voices break down complex forestry topics. Volunteer instructors from regional UC Cooperative Extension offices, CAL FIRE stations, Resource Conservation Districts, US Forest Service, Fire Safe Councils, UC campuses and community colleges are invited to teach a ninety-minute class (or two!) on their subject of expertise. This leads to classes both wide-ranging in subject matter and specific to regional forests and community needs.
For participants years removed from traditional school, Tree School is an exciting return to the classroom. Participants peruse session catalogs and build a personalized schedule around the topics that pique their interest or instructors whose names look familiar.
When preparing for this year’s Butte and Humboldt sessions, the Forest Stewardship Team worked closely with the Butte County Fire Safe Council, College of the Redwoods, and UC ANR Forest Advisors Rick Satomi and Yana Valachovic to recruit thirty-nine volunteer instructors. Subject themes of post-fire recovery, coast redwood forest and fire ecology, forest health, and wildfire resilience emerged early in the planning process, and resulted in forty-nine classes across both sessions.
Butte session focuses on reforestation, and improving community wildfire resilience
Outside of the Paradise High School cafeteria, tree branches took center stage for a lesson on conifer identification. Registered Professional Forester Dan Blessing and Horticulturalist Renee Main led an afternoon class on “Identifying Diverse Conifers”, where students learned to decipher differences between firs, pines, and cedars. Concurrently, Tree School students across campus were in a very different class, where instructor Shelley Villalobos explained wide-scale efforts to replace forests that had been lost to wildfire.
In the wake of recent wildfires in Butte County, organizations like the Fire Safe council have been teaching communities both how to recover from wildfire and how to increase resilience in preparation for the next fire. This theme was reflected in this region’s CA Tree School session, where participants could pair Villalobos’s “Seed Collection for Future Forests” lecture with a walking tour of defensible-space friendly yards led by Fire Safe Council Project Manager Calli-Jane West.
In addition to region-specific learning, every session of CA Tree School includes courses that learners new to the forestry space can enjoy. At Butte, an exercise in forest inventory introduced participants to tree measurement tools, one instructor’s presentation explained the symbiotic relationship between forests and fire, and an introductory section on forest mapping using Avenza familiarized participants with new technologies. "The hands on activities made a world of difference, and now I feel so much more adept at using Avenza," noted a forest mapping student.
Humboldt session explores hands-on projects and current research
At College of the Redwoods, CA Tree School students traipsed through the forest to set up wildlife cameras, received tips for mushroom foraging, and visited a wood-fired kiln in the college’s art department. Participants joined instructors from CR, UC Berkeley, UC ANR, and the US Geological Survey to learn and connect underneath the redwood trees.
It may not be a coincidence that California’s first prescribed burn association started in Humboldt, and many of the class offerings at Tree School imparted students with skills to DIY forestry projects at home, such as how to utilize prescribed fire for vegetation management and what tools you need to do the job. In one of the first sections of the day, UC Berkeley Extension Specialist Dan Sanchez tasked participants to work in teams and make their own nail-laminated timber panels. Meanwhile, College of the Redwoods professor Alissa Sarvinski helped her students use the ribbon test to judge the texture of a soil sample in a classroom lab.
This session also featured current research on post-fire redwood ecology during a lecture with UC ANR Forest Advisor Brian Woodward, forest inventory with CR Forestry Instructor Valerie Elder, and oak woodland management with UC ANR Forest Advisor Yana Valachovic. "Yana is super knowledgeable," noted one of her Tree School students. "It's a very interesting subject, and I really appreciated her perspective and experience."
CA Tree School’s impact
This year, 181 attendees came to CA Tree School to take part in an event grounded in community and a shared love for forests. 94% agreed their forestry knowledge increased because of Tree School, and 85% expressed that they were able to connect with landowners and natural resource professionals.
Looking to the future, the Forest Stewardship team hopes to offer this experience to other regions, including Southern California. With each Tree School session, UC ANR increases public understanding of these complex ecosystems, and encourages communities to see the forests through new eyes.