LandPaths’ Docent Program is a fantastic way to share your love of nature with the community in Sonoma County– adults and children alike.
Docents are vital to building our capacity to offer free and sliding scale outings, allowing many more people to connect with the land. Through their enthusiasm, knowledge, and local connections, docents also serve as important volunteer community ambassadors for LandPaths and the preserves that we steward.
We currently have thriving docent programs at Lafferty Ranch in Petaluma and Bohemia Ecological Preserve in Occidental. We’ll be launching one at Riddell Preserve in Healdsburg in early 2024!
These outings allow hundreds more people to know and love Lafferty Ranch, fostering the love needed to sustain the effort to open it fully as a park.
-Larry Modell, docent
Program Goals
- Provide the public with regular opportunities to hike and explore LandPaths preserves.
- Provide high-quality, fun, and inspirational experiences for the public while they visit the preserve.
- Assist visitors in discovering the meaning and significance of their experience—their appreciation of the site and nature (this contrasts with a goal only to increase their knowledge).
- Assist in building a community of neighbors, users, and visitors to form a strong stewarding force for the future of LandPaths preserves – People Powered Preserves.
How You Can Participate
Sign Up for a Docent Training: You’ll learn basic preserve background information and the basic structure for LandPaths’ outings. Additional enrichment opportunities will provide more detailed naturalist instruction to deepen your understanding of and appreciation for the ecology, geology, wildlife and natural history of our preserves and the surrounding region. Docent trainings occurs several times a year. Sign up for our bimonthly eblast to learn about dates for the training as they are added to the Calendar.
Many Docents will already come with significant knowledge on a specific topic. We encourage docents to share their passion with other docents and to incorporate their knowledge into the hikes which they lead. Docents may also become inspired to delve into new topics, through research and exploration—becoming local experts in their fields of choice.
Questions
Contact Laura Revilla at [email protected] or (707) 544-7284.
Thank you to all of our current volunteer docents!
Bohemia Ecological Preserve
- Emily M.
- Candice D
- Lacey S.
- Lindsey D.
- Carole H.
- Eberle E.
- Melissa H.
Lafferty Ranch
- Larry M.
- Matt M.
- Hugh S.
- Teddy H.
- Joy R.
- Patricia Tuttle Brown
- John K.
- Edward J.
- Madeline K.
- Carole H.
- Joseph C.
- Michael N.
- Heather D.
- Matt S.
- Gregory S.
- Meg B.
- Eric B.
- Indigo B.
- Bruce S.
- Robert C.
- Colleen B.
Riddell Preserve
Coming Soon! [Insert your name here?]
Docents on Social
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