In this 6th workshop in our "Can We Rehydrate California?" series, Brock Dolman presented on the recently launched Fuel to Flows Campaign that builds on three decades of land stewardship and watershed restoration work by the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center. The campaign teaches how to use the natural materials from forest thinning to slow and sink water—through gully stuffing, check dams, etc.—rather than burning it. This is one of several follow ups to the conversation that Brock and I had earlier this spring.
The term “Fuels to Flows,” coined by OACD's WATER Institute, asserts that our fire fears are connected to our water woes — drought, water quality issues, flooding, and the growing uncertainty about our water future—and advocates for the reintegration of fire and “fuel” load management with the “flows” of the carbon, water and life cycles. See below for a biography of Brock.
Note: I have serious concerns about the amount and type of forest thinning and clearcutting that is happening in California and throughout North America and the world, often framed as fire prevention, or as ‘renewable fuels’ to reach climate goals (shipped to Europe as wood pellets to smelt rare metals for the production of solar panels). But in places where forest thinning or brush cutting is happening, using the remaining brush and branches for slowing water is a far, far better outcome than simply burning them up.
We are actively starting a community-based gully stuffing and check dam project here in Vermont for flood and fire protection as well—where there are plenty of materials on the ground as a gift from forest life cycles.
—Didi Pershouse
Brock Dolman is a wildlife biologist who is nationally recognized as a restoration ecologist and renowned innovator in watershed management and Permaculture design. Brock integrates wildlife biology, native California botany and watershed ecology with education about regenerative human settlement design, ethno-ecology, and ecological literacy to illuminate what it is to live in partnership with a living, emergent Earth and engender societal transformation.
In 1994 Brock co-founded the Sowing Circle, LLC Intentional Community & Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (OAEC) where he continues to reside and act as director of OAEC’s Permaculture/Resilient Community Design Program, Wildlands Program and WATER Institute. He has taught Permaculture courses and consulted on regenerative project design and implementation in 15 countries and widely in the U.S, and coined the phrase “slow it, spread it, sink it.” He has been active in promoting the idea of Bringing Back Beaver in California since the late 1990’s, which in part, has resulted in the creation of California Department of Fish & Wildlife’s Beaver Restoration Program. His latest effort, based on over 35 years of direct experience, is OAEC’s Fuels to Flows Campaign. Brock graduated in 1992 with honors from the University of California Santa Cruz in Agro-Ecology and Conservation Biology.
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