Wildfire Resilience for Communities in East Sonoma County
Santa Rosa, CA
March 8th, 2025, 9:00am – 4:30pm
Link to Field Training Registration
This in-person field workshop is an opportunity to learn about fuels management, wildfire resilience, and community protection through examples of work by local communities (Saddle Mountain Preserve, Monan’s Rill, and Pepperwood Preserve) within the Mayacamas Range. The program will feature prescribed fire, corridor fuels treatment, and post-fire treatments.
Kim Batchelder, Vegetation Management Coordinator at Sonoma County Ag + Open Space, will outline the workshop's goals and key activities to begin the workshop. Monica Delmartini, Stewardship Specialist at Sonoma County Ag + Open Space, will explain property management and treatment types at Saddle Mountain. This will include information on management objectives, shaded fuel breaks and under-story thinning treatments, preparation for prescribed burns, and insights into the successes and challenges of these practices. Ben Nicholls, CAL FIRE Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit Division Fire Chief, will also explain CAL FIRE's involvement in these treatments.
Next, Rick Kavinoky and Thea Maria Carlson, two of the co-owners and residents of Monan's Rill, will lead the group on a walk through the 414 acres that the community stewards. They will cover multiple treatment types and discuss logging, wildfire effects, and the prescribed burning process. Genevieve Tarino, Forestry Project Manager at Sonoma RCD, will overview cost-share programs, including NBFIP, CFIP, and EQIP. Additionally, Lynn Garric, Chair of the Upper Mark West FireSafe Council & FireWise Community, will speak on community organization and inter-community relationships.
At Pepperwood Preserve, Devyn Friedfel, Assistant Preserve Manager, will discuss prescribed burn and grazing treatments on the property. He will also explain the details of pile burning and how this treatment can prepare for a broadcast burn.
The workshop will include hiking off-trail in uneven, unstable, and steep situations. We will hike for approximately 1 hour at our first site, with stops along the way. This will be followed by approximately 20 minutes of hiking at our second site.
| Time | Item |
|---|---|
| 9:00am | Field workshop begins |
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Site 1: Saddle Mountain Introduction to Saddle Mountain Property Management & Treatment Types CALFIRE Collaborations |
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| 12:15pm | Lunch |
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Site 2: Monan's Rill Community Organization Perspectives Property History & Treatment Types Buffer Zones Logging Areas Wildfire & Prescribed Fire Effects Prescribed Fire Planning & Partner Engagement Cost Share Programs Overview |
|
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Site 3: Pepperwood Preserve Prescribed Fire and Grazing Treatment Types Pile Burning Overview |
|
| 4:30pm |
Field workshop ends |
Trainers:
Kim Batchelder, Vegetation Management Coordinator at Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District
Kim began his career managing Wilderness Areas in Colorado, then reforestation projects in rural Costa Rica, followed by forest management certification from Mexico to Chile, before working in sustainable forest management for The Nature Conservancy – Mexico. He finally landed in Sonoma County in 2005 to help protect and manage fee lands and create trails like the North Sonoma Mountain and Healdsburg Ridge Open Space Preserves for Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District. Now, Kim is the Vegetation Management Coordinator to assist Sonoma County to develop tools and treatments to improve the health and resiliency of the county’s landscapes while protecting communities from large-scale wildfire events. He manages the Vegetation Management Grant Program and collaborating with County agencies, local non-profits and fire services agencies to determine the best way to use $25 Million dedicated to vegetation management from a PG&E Settlement with the County after the 2017 wildfires. Kim received his Bachelors degree in Biology and Environmental Conservation from University of Colorado at Boulder and a Masters in Forestry from Duke University.
Monica Delmartini, Stewardship Specialist and Fire Ecologist, Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District
Monica stewards Ag + Open Space's Saddle Mountain Open Space Preserve and works with conservation easements, easement landowners, and community and conservation partners to support ecologically sensitive land stewardship and effective fuel and vegetation management throughout Sonoma County. She is a botanist and wildland firefighter with nearly twenty years of experience with prescribed fire planning and operations as well as career-long involvement with habitat restoration and ecology. Before joining Ag + Open Space, she worked for the National Park Service, where she assisted with prescribed burning, fuel and vegetation monitoring, and fire history research across a wide array of California habitats. Monica is currently conducting research on how typical fuels treatments modulate fire behavior in local hardwood forests, and is passionate about forest and disturbance ecology, collaborative land stewardship, and supporting and restoring Indigenous rights to access and care for ancestral lands.
Ben Nicholls, Division Chief, Sonoma County Operations, CAL FIRE Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit
Chief Nicholls has spent his career over the last 31 years as a professional firefighter with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection – CAL FIRE. He is responsible for CAL FIRE operations across Sonoma County and the 200+ personnel assigned to the Division. Chief Nicholls has been apart all the major fires in Sonoma County since 2017 including the 2017 Tubbs, 2017 Nuns, 2019 Kincaid, 2020 Lightning Complex, 2020 Glass, and the 2024 Point. Chief Nicholls has witnessed firsthand the devastation caused by these major fires and is doing everything in his power to implement proactive techniques to reduce the threat to lives, property, and the environment. Some of the techniques being employed in Sonoma County are prescribed fire, shaded fuel breaks, supporting grant work, defensible space inspections, and public education.
Genevieve Tarino, Forestry Project Manager, Sonoma Resource Conservation District
Genevieve Tarino is a forestry project manager at the Sonoma Resource Conservation District. Genevieve works with landowners across the county to improve their forestlands through technical assistance and planning. She is responsible for developing forest management plans, assisting with the administration of the North Bay Forest Improvement Program (NBFIP), and providing grant support. Genevieve is FF2 certified and is working toward her California Forestry License.
Lynn Garric, Chair of the UMW FireSafe Council and FireWise Community
Lynn is a native of Sonoma County and has been a resident of the UMWW for 50 years. She owns 165 acres that was severely burned in the 2017 Tubbs Fire which destroyed her home, cottage and access bridge to her property. She has since rebuilt and returned and devotes much of her time to stewarding her property and supporting her community. Lynn is retired, but spent most of her professional career in administration, training and writing grants which have proved to be a helpful skills in appealing for funding for fuels management for the UMWW.
Rick Kavinoky, Co-owner, Monan's Rill
Rick Kavinoky, along with several other families, is a co-owner of Monan’s Rill, a 414 acre property in eastern Sonoma County. Almost the entire property burned in the Glass Fire in 2020. Since the 1970s Monan’s Rill has been dealing with vegetation management, but only in 2018 did they add prescribed fire as an additional tool. Rick will show you several treated areas, including a unit receiving prescribed fire shortly before the wildfire, and a unit that was salvage logged after the fire, as well as areas which will now serve as buffers between the wildland and the buildings in the next wildfire.
Rick Kavinoky is now retired, spending a lot of time cutting, piling and burning at Monan’s Rill. Before retirement he worked for 20 years as a carpenter, and then 20 years teaching math at community colleges.
Thea Maria Carlson, Co-Owner of Monan's Rill, Stewardship Manager at Tribal EcoRestoration Alliance, Associate Faculty and Wildfire Resilience Specialist at Santa Rosa Junior College
Thea Maria Carlson is a land tender, facilitator, educator, community weaver, speaker, writer, and co-creator. Since 2015, Thea has lived and tended land at Monan's Rill, an intergenerational community in the Mayacamas Mountains, within the traditional ancestral territory of the Wappo people. Thea works as Stewardship Manager with the Tribal EcoRestoration Alliance (TERA), as well as Associate Faculty and Wildfire Resilience Specialist at Santa Rosa Junior College. Thea holds a B.S. in Earth Systems from Stanford University, has over two decades experience in land stewardship and ecological agriculture, and is a California State-Certified Prescribed-Fire Burn Boss.
Devyn Friedfel, Fire and Stewardship Manager, Pepperwood Preserve
Devyn Friedfel was born and raised in the Russian River area where he grew up learning to love the beauty and diversity of Sonoma County. While attending the Santa Rosa Junior College (SRJC), Devyn organized volunteer restoration work days at Shone Farm to help control invasive plants and promote native species. Through the SRJC he had an opportunity to visit Pepperwood and dreamt of someday working there. Devyn moved to Santa Cruz County to finish his Bachelor’s Degree, then worked up and down the central coast with the UC Natural Reserve System, while simultaneously working as a Field Biologist for two environmental consulting companies. Devyn is now Pepperwood’s Fire and Stewardship Manager, and has been with Pepperwood for the last seven years. As the Fire and Stewardship Manager, Devyn oversees all aspects of facility maintenance and land management, including but not limited to invasive plant management, wildfire recovery, forest fuel reduction, ecological monitoring, rotational grazing and prescribed fire. Devyn is active in his local Prescribed Burn Association and became a California State Certified Burn Boss in 2022. Devyn also sits on the Good Fire Alliance steering committee, Sonoma County's Prescribed Burn Association and he is Currently working on Finishing his M.S. in Wildland Management at Chico State under Dr. Hankins.
