- Author: Pamela S Kan-Rice
UC Master Gardeners of Ventura County honored for IPM outreach
UC Master Gardeners of Ventura County received an Integrated Pest Management Achievement Award on Feb. 26 from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation. Assemblymember Steve Bennett and UC President Michael Drake praised their accomplishments in pre-recorded video statements that were played during the awards ceremony.
The UC Master Gardeners of Ventura County, which includes 175 volunteers serving the 800,000 residents of Ventura County, conducts extensive IPM-focused outreach and education for pest management.
They stand out for their extensive IPM-focused outreach and education efforts, including for preventing locally relevant invasive species in Ventura County.
In addition to the 10 demonstration gardens maintained throughout the county, the Master Gardener volunteers perform habitat restoration work to support the rare and native species that can be found on the Channel Islands and in the Santa Monica Mountains. They provide support for local invasive species control efforts by offering resources developed by the UC ANR on their website and by maintaining a unique committee, the Invasive and Beneficial Outreach Group.
They also host multilingual gardening and IPM educational events, conducts outreach at community events and demonstration gardens, and answers pest management questions from the public via its Home Gardening Help Desk.
“MGVC's dedication to environmental stewardship and the advancement of safer, more sustainable IPM practices for the residents of Ventura County through extensive information-sharing efforts is commendable,” said DPR in a news release.
President Drake also gave the Master Gardeners of Ventura County a shout-out during his speech at the Black History Month online commemoration Feb. 28.
UC ANR forest team makes new connections at conference
Four UC ANR forestry experts attended the Forestry Strategies and Innovations 2025 hosted by Calforests and co-sponsored by UC ANR in Sacramento on Feb. 11-12.
At the conference, Yana Valachovic, UCCE forest advisor and county director for Humboldt and Del Norte counties; Katie Low, ANR Fire Network academic coordinator; Lenya Quinn-Davidson, ANR Fire Network director; and Ricky Satomi, UCCE forestry natural resources advisor for Sutter, Yuba, Butte, Placer and Nevada counties, looked for opportunities to partner on projects.
“We networked with policymakers, agency staff and leaders in California forestry and natural resource management and generally left feeling better connected and engaged with this diverse and dynamic audience,” Valachovic said.
“As UC ANR sponsored the student reception, we interviewed and encouraged students to consider a future career with ANR,” she added.
By networking with other forestry professionals at the conference, the team made some connections that may lead to new collaborations. For example, they plan to partner with CAL FIRE's statewide communications team on a wildfire preparedness social media campaign during Wildfire Preparedness Week, the first week of May.
Southwest Regional Food Business Center gets clean review
USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service, which oversees the Regional Food Business Centers accepted the Southwest Regional Food Business Center's July-December 2024 Performance Progress Report without clarification or revision.
“It does feel good to receive a clean review with no revisions,” said Tracy Celio, Southwest Regional Food Business Center program manager. “We can thank Karen Jetter's team for leading on reporting.”
The Southwest Regional Food Business Center's dashboard of activities showed they provided technical assistance to 1,523 clients.
The Southwest Regional Food Business Center hosts a quarterly webinar series designed to highlight innovative projects led by its partners across Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah. These webinars give attendees an in-depth understanding of the center's initiatives, focusing on business development and support for local producers, farmers and ranchers.
Each session highlights important projects within the region, encouraging collaboration and knowledge-sharing among industry professionals. The webinars are free and open to everyone, offering a valuable resource for those interested in sustainable food systems and agricultural advancements.
The next webinar is Agriculture and Agricultural Technology on April 16 at 3 p.m. Gabe Youtsey, UC ANR chief innovation officer, is one of the presenters. Register at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/EZzMw8BXTy-IN2MhMxEe8g#/registration.
For details on upcoming and past webinars, visit www.swfoodbiz.org.
- Author: Grace Dean
For the past four years, Kim Ingram has been listening closely to the private forest landowners who participate in her Forest Stewardship Workshop series. During the workshops, landowners share their experiences clearing thickets of vegetation, replanting post-wildfire and tackling invasive species, and their concerns of who will take care of their forest when they're gone.
To alleviate their stress, Ingram–Forest Stewardship Education coordinator with University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources–turns to natural resource professionals from CAL FIRE, local Resource Conservation Districts, and the U.S Forest Service who can share knowledge and resources with participants. Recently, Ingram developed a story map that aims to provide landowners with a platform they can use to share their experiences and ways that they have been empowered to manage their land.
"It's not uncommon for small forest landowners to feel overwhelmed with their forest management responsibilities and uncertain over what steps to take first," said Ingram. "Through the Forest Stewardship Workshops and this story map project, we hope to show that there is an entire community of forest landowners in the same situation, learning from each other and moving forward towards their management goals."
The Forest Stewardship Story Map team used ArcGIS StoryMaps to design the project, with 15 participants providing interviews and visual content. StoryMaps provides a user-friendly interface where website visitors can either click on a county to view specific interviews or scroll to view the stories.
The forestry team plans to interview at least one landowner and natural resource professional in every forested county in California so private forest landowners have a local contact or can become inspired by a project in their area.
Theresa Ciafardoni, a forest landowner in Nevada County, said that the UC ANR Forest Stewardship Workshop helped her manage postfire restoration and long-term land use planning.
"It opened up so many options and possibilities," said Ciafardoni. "All the individuals who presented in the Forest Stewardship Workshop were open to phone calls for specific questions and provided invaluable technical assistance."
Involving landowners and forestry professionals with this project was an early decision made by Ingram, who believed it was important that the map held appeal beyond hosting stories. Now, the project functions as a networking tool for landowners seeking professional assistance, too.
Past Forest Stewardship Workshop presenters shared their contact information and the motivations behind their forest management work so that landowners could find assistance in their area. The professionals currently hosted on the map include Resource Conservation District managers, UC ANR forestry advisors and private contractors.
"The most motivated landowners are invested not only economically, but their heart is into it," said Ryan Tompkins, UC Cooperative Extension forestry advisor for Plumas, Sierra and Lassen counties. "The natural world is full of uncertainty, but they're committed to continuing education and learning about how to be a good land steward. This takes a certain level of humility recognizing that our tenure as a steward on the land is a very short period of a forest's lifetime."
Looking ahead, the team envisions the map as a working document that will eventually include interviews with indigenous tribal members who focus on traditional ecological knowledge projects, interviews and information from the UC ANR Postfire Forest Resilience Program, and a feature that will filter stories by topic (e.g. reforestation or prescribed burning).
"This isn't a project that could be completed by one person," explained Grace Dean, Forest Stewardship communications specialist. "The same way that Kim and other presenters explain forest management as a collaborative process holds true for this project."
The Forest Stewardship Workshop series gives participants the ability to start as beginners and build upon their knowledge and experiences. In the same vein, this story map provides the Forest Stewardship team a solid base of real stories to add on to over time. The hope is that it will grow into a multifaceted tool reaching new forest landowners, eventually enveloping their stories within the small forest landowner community.
To view the Forest Stewardship Story Map, visit: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/bd062108d9894da7920d7aef06fe2c2c.
