You’re listening to Unite and Heal America and KABC 790 with Matt Matern, your host. Hi, this is Dalia Khalili, I’m the guest host today on Unite and Heal America with Matt Matern on KABC 790. Thank you for joining us today.

Our guest today is Elena DeLacy. She is the executive director of the American River Conservancy. And we’re happy to have her join us. Elena is currently the Executive Director. She’s worked with the organization for almost 20 years. And it seems like the organization’s been around since the late 80s. So with that, welcome, Elena. Good to see you.

Thank you. Nice to meet you, Delia.

You too. Could you maybe start off and give us an idea about just mean first start with the mission statement and what areas you service for all the listeners today are?

Yeah, so American River Conservancy are all referred to us by our acronym, which is AARC. For most of the show, it’s kind of a mouthful to say, American River Conservancy every single time. But we’re a community nonprofit organization. And our mission is to ensure healthy ecosystems in the upper American River, and upper cussedness river watersheds.

So that’s basically west of Sacramento, east of Lake Tahoe, in the central Sierra Nevada. And we do that through a combination of land conservation, land stewardship, and environmental education services to our community.

We are a small organization, we have about 12 staff at this time. And we’re just, you know, we’ve been around since 1989, as you mentioned late 80s. And it’s, it’s really kind of a unique opportunity to kind of speak to you today, because we are, are much of our service area right now is is being is burned in the Kaldor fire that’s ongoing.

So yeah, I’m so sorry to hear about that. And you know, these fires ravaging California, you know, it seems like it’s not just the season, it’s almost year long. And it started to affect almost, you know, so many residents overstate, can you maybe start and let us know a little bit about what’s happening in the areas that you do service with the fire and any response that you’re all taking?

If you can, yeah, possible response at this time other than having firefighters go?

I Well, it started about two weeks ago, and at that time was very small fire. When it first started. We have about, I would say, we have about 1,500 active supporters. We have lots of volunteers. And so we just made sure that all of our staff and volunteers and supporters are okay. And just let everybody know that, you know, if they need assistance, evacuating, or whatever, that we have a really tight knit community of people that are able to help.

So immediately, you know, that was that was the immediate response from us as an organization and, and also, you know, putting the call out to folks to encourage them to donate money to the relief efforts for the evacuees and others who lost their homes. So, you know, just banding together as a community is our first response. And I think right now, what we’re what we’re focusing on, because we are a science based organization is and we do partner very closely with the agencies that are in charge of Land Management in the area.

So the Eldorado National Forests, US Forest Service. Mostly, you know, most of the fires burning on federal public lands. We’ve been in contact with their scientists and their emergency response team. They have a, what’s called a bear team. It’s been a er, burn area, emergency response, I think is what it stands for. But they’re already talking about getting in there.

And their job is to evaluate the intensity of the fire and effects from the fire. And part of our job as a partner is to help them with future restoration efforts. So going in there and making sure that erosion doesn’t have a huge significant impact on the watershed. but also monitoring monitoring impacts. So that’s something that we’re looking at already. Even now as the fire still burns.

And for the area that the AARC services, how long have you been seeing fires affect that area?

Well, fires are a natural part of the ecological landscape here. I ever since I have lived I grew up in Sacramento. So ever since I’ve can remember, we’ve always had smoke from wildfires affecting the air quality. And I think the difference now is that fires are bigger.

We basically call them mega fires now. The one that’s burning right now the Kaldor fire is approaching 200,000 acres. And it’s burning areas that I didn’t think could be burned there. Lots of granite. You know, the it’s crusted this year at Eco Summit.

So lots of granite up there, but it’s spotting miles and miles to the east. So So yeah, fires natural part of the landscape, natural part of the ecosystem. But not these mega fires. These are completely different. And they’re driven by different different things.

How long have you been noticing the mega fires in the area?

I think when we started I think it really started for me noticing it was with the king fire in 2014. And that was a fire that started near Pollock pines near highway 50. And went north through much of the upper American what River watershed. And that was I think it was just over 97,000 acres that fire and that at that time, that seemed like a really big fire.

And it was, but now, it’s dwarfed in comparison to some of the other fires that we’re seeing in Northern California, like the Dixie fires, over 500,000 acres now. And so it’s it’s it’s been six or seven years. And and we’re you know, it’s it’s challenging to say the least. But there there are solutions are there things that we can do better to make sure that at least these fires don’t impact our watersheds the way that they happen.

So, um, and I guess we can get in a little bit more as of the solutions. And I kind of wanted to first like revert back to you, you talked about the mission of the organization, and how did it start, you know, what was what was the need that you all saw? In that area?

I would say that just like any other nonprofit kind of grassroots organization, we started as a result of a small group of people who lived in the area and saw some, I think, I think they saw some illegal roadbuilding happening along with the banks of the South Fork American River. You know, maybe they went down on boats or so they left the South Fork, American River is a really popular whitewater rafting destination. A

nd so there was already a large river community, you know, based in this on the South Fork, American River, and a lot of people care about the river, what happened on their route down the river. And so they they banded together and decided that something needed to happen to make sure that the River Corridor, and the watershed was protected for so that, you know, everybody could enjoy it.

And so it started just, you know, maybe five, six people who were willing to, you know, volunteer their time, I don’t think we had a paid employee, the first two years of the organization’s existence, so it’s definitely a labor of love for many of us. Yeah, actually,

I think I got rafting down there a couple times when I was a kid. So definitely a fun area but an area that needs to be preserved and kept clean. And how is it from, I guess, stemming from that point? What other areas of need, did the organization see in addition to protecting that watershed area?

Yeah, so the South Fork American River is where it started, but really to encompass the whole entire upper American River Watershed so everything east of Folsom Lake I’m up into Placer County and El Dorado County, to the crest of the Sierra. But also in the late ‘90s, there was a need to, there’s sort of a hole to be filled with the south part of El Dorado County, which is the contaminants River watershed.

And so we, we expanded our efforts into the Cosumnes River watershed, which is a really unique watershed. The river is there’s no major dams on that river.

So it’s it’s a very different river system from the American River, which has over 17 dams and hydroelectric facilities on it.

So it’s a good comparison between the two. They’re both very important rivers. And both of them provide water to Sacramento region and for wildlife as well.

And how many people in California rely on the water of those, that portion of the American River and the contaminants river?

I would say, I don’t know exactly from just the American River alone, but I do know that about 27 million Californians rely on water from both the Sacramento and the you know, Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers combined.

Great. Well, let’s take a break. We’ll be back with Elena DeLacy of the American River Conservancy.

As you may know, your host Matt Matern of Unite and Heal America is also the founder of Matern Law Group, their team of experienced employment consumer and environmental attorneys are dedicated to leveling the playing field by giving everyone access to the highest quality legal representation contact 844 MLG for you, that’s 844 MLG for you, or 84465449688446544968.

Hi, this is KABC 790’s Unite and Heal America with Matt Mater, and Dalia Khalili guest posting. We’re back with Elena DeLacy of the American River Conservancy or AARC. You know, before the break, we were talking a bit about the recent color fire and how it’s affecting the area.

And I wanted to kind of delve into the larger issue of climate change and how it’s affecting the area in Atlanta. Could you give us a little bit of insight into AARC ‘s role in addressing climate change?

Sure, yeah. So there’s a couple of things I wanted to touch on when one is just land conservation in general, and how that addresses climate change, and also land management and land stewardship, and how how we are participating in projects to help address the impacts from climate change. But first land conservation we are we are a land trust at our core.

And for those of you who might not know what a land trust is, we essentially what we do is we purchase land, or we accept donations of land from willing sellers are willing donors. And that land is protected forever. It’s in perpetuity. So and we do that we protect land by creating recreational access on some areas, sometimes we will maintain working farms and ranches. Other times the land may be set aside for wildlife habitat where there’s an endangered species.

So it really depends on on what that is. But really, I think it’s important to recognize the importance of land conservation. natural and working lands, forests, grasslands, wetlands, rivers, farms, range land. And even urban green spaces, like parks, I think are really key to helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions because you’re taking land out of you know, away from being converted or developed into something that may increase carbon emissions.

Also, for things like forests and grasslands and wetlands are extremely good at capturing carbon and storing carbon and wood forests, you know, especially we see if trees are allowed to grow bigger and older, they will they will store more carbon than smaller trees. So that’s really important. I would say that in terms of our area in the central Sierra Nevada, climate change really manifests itself in Mega fires as we to talk about but also drought.

And just uncertainty with water supply is a huge issue for us. And one of the ways that we’re trying to work towards solutions on that and and address those issues is, is through a unique partnership project and it’s called the French Meadows partnership. And we we currently manage about 6400 acres right above French Meadows reservoir in Placer. County. So it’s just west of Squaw Valley area, west of Lake Tahoe. And we we were able to purchase about 10,000, up there in 2015, from timber Investment Corporation.

And we donated some of the land to the Tahoe National Forest, and they included it in the granite cheap wilderness area, but we retained some of the land, because we felt it was important to participate in this partnership with other partners like the Nature Conservancy and the National Forest and Placer County Water Agency Placer County, Sierra Nevada Conservancy, UC Merced is involved, lots of different partners.

But there’s definitely a distinct link between ecological based thinning and reducing the fuels in the forest and water supply. And so we’re exploring that link. But we’re also it’s a demonstration project in many ways, because we’re demonstrating how landscape scale ecological forest management can work when you have partners working together.

But you know, it’s kind of everything coming together, there’s, there’s these threats of past forest management, fire suppression, climate change. And so these forests that were once characterized by widely spaced trees, and beneficial low severity, fires have now become dominated by thick growths of small trees, very, very small trees, and shrubs. And these destructive mega fires, so So what we’re able to do is come in with our partners with funding from various sources, to do ecological thinning.

So we do thinning by hand, also thinning from below, which involves heavy machinery, we remove biomass, we will eventually come in to those areas that we’ve treated and use prescribed fire to continue to manage those landscapes to reduce the risk of mega fires, but it also has this, this added benefit of protecting the watersheds above these reservoirs, these important reservoirs on the American River, the headwaters of the American River.

Because, you know, we saw with the king fire in 2014-2015, that after the fires after the, you know, first storms that came through, just washed everything down into the reservoirs. And it’s really destructive. And so it costs the water agency’s money, it costs taxpayers and Ratepayers money. So we’re trying to be proactive, and prevent something like that happening again.

And it’s really a unique opportunity to really study the impacts of how these different forest treatments are able to interact with water supply. So that’s where UC Merced and the Sierra Nevada Research Institute comes in.

They have data loggers and monitoring stations set up on our property on our lands that we manage, and also on the forest service side of things, where they’re able to capture really useful empirical data to apply to the research and the models that they’re working on for the entire Sierra. So it’s just it’s a great project. The other thing I wanted to mention is that…

Can I just ask you a question? When saying that I’m like really intrigued by people donating? I guess is it mostly donating private land to your organization to be able to maintain and with a thought that eventually is going to be then donated from your organization over to one of the state or national park?

So this particular project, we’ve purchased the land from the seller, and they did not donate it? And so I would say the vast majority 30 of the land that we conserve or protect through conservation is actually purchased, we do occasionally get land donated to us, which is wonderful. And much of the time when we’re accepting donations of land, we will hold on to it and manage it ourselves.

But I would say of the 28,000 or so acres, we’ve protected over the last 32 years, we have donated or transferred about 50% of those lands to land management agencies.

So that includes Forest Service BLM state parks. So because they have more resources to manage the lands, and sometimes we we co manage, sometimes we help them with, with management, and we’ll participate with raising funds for that sort of thing.

That’s great. And the when you’re talking about the little shrubs, or the smaller trees, that that kind of filled in that area that was usually typically are the past spaced out, is that the result of fires that result in new growth below is that where that’s coming from?

Well, on that particular property, it’s a result of past forestry practices. So we purchased the land from a timber Investment Corporation, so they were managing it, the only thing they were managing it for was to remove timber. And so they weren’t managing it for the ecological aspects of it necessarily. They were managing as a as a plantation essentially.

So the areas where we are seeing these really closely densely packed trees where we have over sometimes 1,000 trees per acre, where historically you would only see maybe 150 trees per acre. That was a result of that pest management where they would take all the trees of the same age, which is basically it’s called even age forest management, aka clear cutting, and they would take all those trees, and they would come back and replant but really close together.

And so you you have you open the canopy up and you get all kinds of growth underneath and then when you don’t manage it, then it becomes this. Basically a tinderbox.

That’s what’s really intriguing. I didn’t know anything about any of that. So thank you for sharing all of that. Well, before we kind of delve into an area, I think it’s a good time for a break. So why don’t, we will continue on with the conservation topics that you were talking about and get into the stewardship as well in your land management. So we’ll take a break. This is KABC 790, Unite and HEal America with Matt Matern, and we’ll be back with our guest Elena DeLacy.

As you may know, your host Matt Matern of Unite and Heal America is also the founder of Matern Law Group, their team of experienced employment consumer and environmental attorneys are dedicated to leveling the playing field by giving everyone access to the highest quality legal representation contact 844 MLG for you, that’s 844 MLG for you, or 84465449688446544968.

W’re back with Unite and Heal America with Matt Matern. And this is guest host Dalia Khalili and we’re back with Elena DeLacy, Executive Director of the American River Conservancy for AARC. Before the break, you had touched upon some of the partnerships that AARC has in managing this land and conservation efforts.

So you know, we great to hear about not only for the organizations you work with, but some of the native and indigenous groups in the area as well, if you could tell us about that.

Yeah, no, thanks for asking. I think it’s important to acknowledge that the area that we work in the upper American River and upper Cosumnes River watersheds, they are the ancestral lands of the NISA, NAN and CRME. Moon walk people.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that, but also that the lands that we protect all of them are culturally important to these tribes and these tribes are still very active in the area and have robust cultures and we have partnered with different tribal groups in our in our region, the Eldorado moonwalk and A Shingle Springs band of Moonwalk Indians and united Auburn Indian community are just a few of the tribes we worked with.

And we continue to work with on not only identifying areas that needs to be protected for cultural resource protection, but also working with them to just understand how we can better manage the land. Indigenous perspectives are important, and I think necessary for us to kind of get out of the mess we’re in with regards to climate change, cultural practices, like like burning, prescribed burning, for example, we’re, we’re coming to realize now in the Western world, that these have always been methods of managing the land.

And so it’s time to listen, it’s time to, to, you know, make sure that we work with these communities to make those make their voices heard, but also give them an opportunity to practice those cultural and spiritual practices on on their ancestral lands.

So that is important to us. And I think in terms of partnerships with other with other agencies, and other entities, we certainly, we could not do anything that we do in a vacuum, we have to by our nature partner with other land management agencies like the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, state parks, but also other nonprofit organizations.

So we have a network of land trusts in in our region, but also in the state. And so I communicate on a regular basis with our partner land trusts, neighboring land trusts, like Placer, Land Trust, and valuable land trust in Sacramento Valley Conservancy, motherlode Land Trust to the south, to really understand and make sure that the projects that we’re working on are connected, because what we’re working on is bigger than just our service areas.

And so we want to make sure that our the lands that we conserve, are connected to the lands that other you know, land trusts and land conservancies are protecting as well, just makes our work more important. And more and more effective.

Um, before the break, when you were talking about, you know, going in and doing the land management, who is it that’s doing it? Or who, you know, are their volunteers? Are you hiring organization? I’m sure with the machinery that is happening for us, you have to hire specific companies, but who’s engaging and all that?

Yeah, that’s a great question. So for the French Meadows project, which we call the American rivers, headwaters American River headwaters restoration project, on our land, we have gotten grants, to hire contractors who are, who have special equipment and have staff to do the types of mechanical thinning that needs to be done, we don’t have the capacity as a full person staff to do that kind of work, but our staff does manage it, and manage and oversee the contractors that are working out there.

So that’s how we do the large scale stuff. For smaller scale and management, we do have pretty large corps of volunteers. And so we have volunteers that help us maintain different areas. We also have a group of volunteers, we call them our land stewards. And they go out and help us just monitor lands that we we own, we currently own about 12,000 acres.

So our staff can’t be out there all the time. So we do rely on volunteers to kind of be the eyes and ears on the ground. And if there’s any sort of overwhelming need to go out there and do land, you know, active management, which often there is we were will either, you know, find funding to do that and hire contractors or we will gather volunteers and do the work ourselves. I think it’s also important to mention that monitoring is a really important part of lead management.

So you can do you know, management activities, like you know, cleaning up the dead wood that falls on the ground or after a storm or, you know, fixing the fences that fall down. But you wouldn’t know that anything needs to be done unless you have someone out there, walking around and taking pictures or keeping a record of things. So that’s a really important part of what we do in terms of stewardship.

Yeah, that’s a excellent point with the monitoring because you don’t there’s there’s so much land. I mean, how do you even get people? Are there trails that are built on the land that already existing or that AARC helps develop so people can get their parts of the land and see what’s going on?

Yeah, so on most of our lands, we tried to have some element of public access, we can’t always do that. Sometimes it’s just not feasible. Because we have a lot of private access roads in our county in the area we work where, you know, a land, piece of land that we protect, it might be adjacent to someone’s residence, and there might be a private road with a gate.

So you know, we can’t always have public access. But we can have, where we do have public access, and trail heads and things like that, we do our best to create new trails, and make sure that we have land stewards that go out there, we have an overwhelming response from land stewards, who are people who are just interested in going out in the hiking, they’re already doing it. So they might as well go out there.

And, you know, take their monitoring sheet with them and their phone to take pictures. We also have areas that aren’t open to the public that land stewards have adopted. And, you know, the benefits to them are they get to go hiking on this piece of land, but nobody visits. It’s not it’s not publicly accessible. And there’s usually, you know, game trails, deer trails and other roads that they can use to access.

So getting into the steward stewardship, I know, I took a look at NRCS website, I was really impressed by all the different types of programs, classes, partnerships that you have. So it would be great to hear about some of these programs that you provide for people in the community who are interested in learning more about the work that you do, and also learning more about the lands and the watersheds.

Yeah. Um, so our stewardship and education programs, I think, are really closely linked. So we have stewardship programs that really focus on different types of monitoring that we do. So we have, I just mentioned the land stewards program.

And we have a bluebird nest box monitoring program that volunteers can be involved in we’ve, we put nest boxes out in different properties, and bluebirds, and other songbirds will make their nest in them in the springtime.

And we monitor those and we provide data to a national database. And we also have a water quality monitoring program that is focused on the Cosumnes River, which is actually the watershed that’s one of the watersheds that’s being impacted by the Kaldor fire. So we have seven years of baseline data on 21 different sites on the Cosumnes River, where we’ve monitored, we haven’t photo monitoring.

So we take pictures of the sites that we monitor, we monitor water temperature, we monitor dissolved oxygen, electro conductivity, and pH of the water at the site. And we do that during the summer, usually. But it’s a really wonderful way, I think we have over 50 volunteers that are involved in that water quality monitoring program.

But it’s a way for people to connect with their watershed and connect with the water that they you know, get out of their faucet and build community because a lot of the areas that we work in are very rural, and don’t necessarily have like a community center.

So this provides people with that social, you know, they get to interact with other people in their community and take care of the resource which is great. That’s wonderful to hear.

Well, let’s take a short break, and when we get back, we’ll talk about some of the other stewardship that your organization does and education for the community. This is Unite and Heal America with Matt Matern. We’re back with Elena DeLacy of the American River Conservancy.

As you may know, your host Matt Matern of Unite and Heal America is also the founder of Matern Law Group, their team of experienced employment consumer and environmental attorneys are dedicated to leveling the playing field by giving everyone access to the highest quality legal representation contact 844 MLG for you, that’s 844 MLG for you or 84465449688446544 968

Hey, we’re back KABC 790’s Unite and Heal America with Matt Matern. And this is Dalia Khalili, the guest host, and we’re here with Elena DeLacy, Executive Director of the American River Conservancy or AARC.

So when we left off before the break, you were talking about some of these volunteer opportunities, including, you know, some of the water quality monitoring that you do and this wonderful community of volunteers that you have from your area. And I love to hear about some of the other opportunities that you provide the community, the children, college students, adults. How about that?

Yeah, so a lot of the volunteers that participate in the land stewardship and monitoring programs I talked about are are attracted to what we do and kind of their first entree into AARC is through our education and public programs. So we have everything ranging from, you know, day hikes, to backpacking trips to day camps and field trips for schools to we offer, we also offer 10 week long undergraduate level courses, through a partnership with the University of California. So it’s a little bit of everything.

And I would say that, just starting with the youth, youth education is extremely important to what we do, and our mission because it engages kids in nature, which is super important. But they also get engaged in real issues. And it’s, it helps to create creative problem solvers, I think when when, when you’re educating kids from a very young age to take care of their environment and take care of the watershed. You’re also creating advocates for the environment. So they’re always going to remember those formative experiences, I know I do. And want to make sure that, you know, there’s always trees to shade their house or their neighborhood and clean their air.

So I think also, some of the benefits are that it cultivates leadership, a lot of our the children who have gone through our nature camp program have come back to be camp counselors when they’re in high school. And then we even have one person on staff who took nature camp when he was in nature camp when he was a little, little boy. So you know, you know, he got his degree in environmental biology. So I think it really does show that multiple studies show that it’s extremely important for development and civic engagement, and improving health.

And I would say that it doesn’t end when kids go away to college, you know, environmental education is for everybody. Outdoor Education, and natural history, education is for all ages. I’m a lifelong learner, I’m still learning about my environment. We all have more to learn, there’s so much to learn. And I think that’s what what’s exciting about our education programs is that there’s something for all ages. We have actually the starting this Thursday, we have our class, it’s called the climate stewards of central Sierra.

And it’s it’s a, it’s a program that we offer as a partner through the University of California, Ag and Natural Resources college. And so we, we take our, you know, people 18 And over so it’s geared towards adults. And it’s really, really focused on the Sierra Nevada foothills and our climate issues that we have here. So wildfire, drought, but it really talks about communication, community communication, regarding climate change, climate science, how people can better understand these climate science and models that are out there.

Also, we’ll talk about community resilience planning and how people can become involved in that sort of thing. So you know, getting involved in fire safe councils, things like that. And we have guest presenters who will come and talk to the class about ways they can be involved and and the science behind climate change and climate adaptation.

So that’s that’s one of the things and that we offer just one of the many classes we offer and in the spring will offer the California naturalist A certification course, which is another adult based education program where people can actually get a certification as a certified naturalist, and they, you know, it’s basically everything they want to know about California’s natural history.

But with a focus on this year of foothills, and Sierra Nevada. You know, everything from plants and animals to water, and geology and soils and everything in between. So they can interpret what they see.

And a lot of those people that go through those programs actually come back and lead hikes for us, or they’ll participate in the water quality monitoring program, or they become land stewards, or they come in help run nature camp or do field trips with schools. So it’s really kind of exciting to see the community of practice that’s grown out of the those adult education opportunities.

And that’s wonderful about all these I like love hearing about all these programs that you do the ones for the children, is there. Do you work with certain school districts or and what area? How far is how far out from where your office is located, do you extend?

I would say that the vast majority of the children and youth that comes to our programs are from this area. So our nature camp, which is a day camp in the summertime, is mostly residents to this area or a lot, a lot of times we’ll get grandchildren visiting their grandparents in the area and the grandparents will send their kids to nature camp for the week. And then for our school programs and field trips, which are held at a local farm that we manage.

There, most of them are local schools. But I will say that we’ve gotten schools as far away as Southern California that have come to the farm. It’s a historic site. So it’s kind of an interesting place to to visit, but also we’re very close to Kelowna, that farm is like two miles from Columbia where gold was discovered. So a lot of a lot of classes come to the region already, too, especially in fourth grade. Fourth grade is when all California students learn about California history. So it’s, uh, it’s, uh, you know, to stop along the way.

So we I would say we get students from all over California, but mostly from the Sacramento region, and El Dorado County Schools. Definitely. We’ve had a bit of a hiatus with school field trips for the last year because of COVID-19. But we’re seeing an uptick in people to schools wanting to get kids outside because all of our field trips are outside. So you know, it’s, it’s really, really good to see that and the field trips that we offer are all at our farm site, which is called Wakamatsu farm.

And it’s a historic site. And it’s the first Japanese colony site in North America is how it got its name, Wakamatsu farm. And all the people that came to that site in 1869, were from a town called Aizu Wakamatsu in Japan. And it’s it’s a working farm still, we have farmers that lease land on site and actually live there. And, you know, they maintain livestock on site and also grow produce for the community.

So it’s, it’s got lots of different things happening and you know, the farmers there are practicing regenerative agriculture, so they’re not only, you know, a lot of times we think of agriculture as being or, you know, farming as being an extractive. You know, we’re just getting crops from the land, but really, it’s, it’s a give and take, right, like the farmers do, steward the land and you know, build the soil, it’s all about the soil.

So it’s, it’s, it’s great to connect the kids that come for school programs to that piece, you know, where food comes from, but also the history and the connection of people to the land there.

So what can people do if they want to get involved, donate to AARC? You know, come on any of these programs to come to your camps? Where can they go and how can they get more information?

So I would say the first thing to do is go to our website, it’s www.arconservancy.org. And you can also follow us on social media. We have Facebook accounts on It’s just America just, you know, search for American River Conservancy. And then we have an Instagram account, which is at AR Conservancy.

And that’ll get you to where you need to go. If you go to our website, we have a schedule or calendar of events. And it’s pretty packed. I would say. If you’re in the area, or if you live in the area, there’s something for everybody. And just Yeah, stop on by or just stop on by our Nature Center in Coloma in the state park.

And if people want to donate to AARC, how can they do that?

Um, they can do that also on our website, or you can donate through Facebook as well. But our donate page is arconservancy.org/donate. And there’s also a big orange button on our homepage where you can make a donation to a vast array of different projects out there that we have.

Thank you so much, Elena. It’s wonderful to hear about all the really important work that American River Conservancy is doing and it was a pleasure having you on the show today.

Thank you for having me.

This is Unite and Heal America with Matt Matern, until the next time.

As you may know your host Matt Matern of Unite and Heal America is also the founder of Matern Law Group, their team of experienced employment consumer and environmental attorneys are dedicated to leveling the playing field by giving everyone access to the highest quality legal representation contact 844 MLG for you, that’s 844 MLG for you or 84465449688446544968.