About LandPaths

LandPaths is an environmental education and conservation leader with the mission is to foster a love of the land in Sonoma County. We believe everyone should have access to the awe and inspiration of nature.

Annually, we engage thousands of participants like you in joyful, caring, and transformative relationship with the land. We do this mainly through creative outings led in both English and Spanish, environmental education, nature camps, and people-powered land stewardship of local open spaces.

Initiatives

Rooting Youth in Nature

LandPaths significantly reduces the barriers and expands opportunities to get outside so that youth are able to experience wonder, joy, awe, belonging, and connection in nature.

Branching Out Conservation for Everyone

We expand the percentage of people in Sonoma County who benefit from healthy land, understand the value of nature, and cultivate a sense of reciprocity with the environment.

Community Care

Growing Community with Nature

Challenges like catastrophic wildfires and flooding are dramatically increasing due to human-caused climate change. Reciprocal and joyful relationships between people and the land is one of the solutions. From volunteer land stewardship days focused on wildlife fuel reduction to community gatherings in local open spaces, you’ll find a range of creative, impactful opportunities to get involved with caring for the land and community in Sonoma County.

Featured Outings

Seasonal Celebration at Rancho Mark West

  • Day: Sunday, December 10
  • Time: 10am – 3pm (open-house style)
  • Place: Rancho Mark West, Santa Rosa

LandPaths and our friends at Ag & Open Space, California State Parks, and the Friends of the Mark West Watershed invite you to join us for the annual Seasonal Celebration at Rancho Mark West! Relax with friends, new and old, and enjoy the forests and creeks of Rancho Mark West, just twenty minutes up the hill from Santa Rosa!

Sign Up Here

Volunteer Forest Stewardship Day at Ocean Song/Myers Preserve

  • Day: Thursday, December 14
  • Time: 10am – 2pm 
  • Place: Ocean Song/Myers Preserve, Occidental

Come on out and tend the forest at Ocean Song/Myers Preserve. It’s the season for light forestry so we’ll be using hand tools to thin the forest which benefits biodiversity and reduces wildfire fuels.

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Stewards on the Scene (SOS) Training at Bohemia Ecological Preserve

  • Day: Saturday, December 16
  • Time: 9am – 1pm
  • Place: Bohemia Ecological Preserve, Occidental 

After a hiatus, the LandPaths SOS (Stewards on the Scene) Teams are back!
SOS team members are mobilized to respond individually or as part of a group during moments of need. In the winter months in particular, heavy wind and rain events can cause severe damage to roads and trails, moving heavy loads of sediment, and many times dispensing them in our creeks. In rain events with excessive rainfall (~2inches/24hours), water features that were recently cleaned can become clogged quickly with debris and this can lead to devastating damage as water finds a new course to travel. Many times, something as simple as the removal of a tree branch from a culvert can save a whole road!

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Vamos Afuera: Búsqueda de Hongos

  • Día: sábado, 16 de diciembre
  • Hora: 9:15am – 2pm
  • Lugar: Reserva Ecológica de Riddell, Healdsburg

¿Alguna vez te has preguntado cómo un hongo parece salir mágicamente del suelo? ¿O cuántos diferentes colores de hongos hay? ¿O por qué algunos hongos tienen una forma típica redonda, pero otros son extraños y viscosos? Si es así, esta aventura es para ti. Aprenderemos sobre el importante papel de los hongos en nuestro ecosistema mientras tratamos de encontrar hongos diferentes y extraños. Nos acompañará Naya Barreto, entusiasta de la micología, en una caminata relajada por la Reserva Ecológica de Riddell en Healdsburg. Favor de notar que estaremos caminando 3 millas o más en senderos inclinados y angostos. Las carriolas no son recomendadas para este evento.

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Stories + News

Stories from the Field

Reflections: Slow Restoration Community Forestry Project for Women and Nonbinary Participants

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By Lara O’Herlihy, Stewardship Field Specialist This past October, fourteen strangers met for the first time at Riddell Preserve, LandPaths’ 400-acre protected open space preserve in the …

Reflections: Slow Restoration Community Forestry Project for Women and Nonbinary Participants Read Article

What’s It Like to Participate in a Prescribed Burn?  

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by Miles Sarvis-Wilburn, Stewardship Field Specialist at LandPaths I arrived at LandPaths’ Ocean Song/Myers Preserve at 7:30am, the sun rising over a thick ocean of fog, and …

What’s It Like to Participate in a Prescribed Burn?   Read Article

Six nature campers walk on a trail through the grasslands at Bohemia Ecological Preserve. There is a forest in the background and a blue sky above.

Reflections on Interconnection in a California Coastal Prairie

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by Miles Sarvis-Wilburn Stewardship Field Specialist The grasslands at Bohemia Ecological Preserve are California coastal prairie, a protected and unique habitat that contains an incredible amount of species …

Reflections on Interconnection in a California Coastal Prairie Read Article

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