News Stories

QUINCY -- Private landowners are responsible for thousands of miles of roads and trails that crisscross the forests and ranches of rural California.  Learning how to maintain and manage these roads more effectively is the focus of an Aug. 24 workshop -- Maintaining Forest & Ranch Roads --  organized by the University of California Cooperative Extension. 

"Rural landowners are in need of good, practical information to help them manage their road systems," said Michael De Lasaux, UC Cooperative Extension natural resources advisor for Plumas and Sierra counties. "This one-day workshop emphasizes field evaluation of road system conditions.  Participants can expect to come away with a much improved understanding of their roads and a strategy for taking care of them."

The workshop instructor is Bill Weaver of Pacific Watershed Associates, a private company specializing in erosion control and sediment reduction.   Topics to be covered include landowner needs, rights and responsibilities related to property access; access in the context of landowner management objectives; environmental impacts of rural roads; rural road design standards; road surfacing and drainage alternatives; stream crossing alternatives; making a bad road or crossing into a good one; and costs and funding for a road project.

The Maintaining Forest & Ranch Roads workshop is scheduled for Friday, Aug. 24 at the UC Forestry Camp, Schneider Creek Road,  Meadow Valley near Quincy.  It runs from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Registration is limited to the first 30 people.  The cost is $30, which includes lunch, refreshments and a roads handbook.  For additional information and registration materials call Sherry Cooper at the Shasta County office of UC Cooperative Extension at  (530) 224-4902 or go online at http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/calgraphics/369.pdf.

De Lasaux can be contacted at (530) 283-6125 or mjdelasaux@ucdavis.edu.