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Cotati Creek Critters is a grassroots citizens' group working to restore a section of the upper reach of the Laguna de Santa Rosa that runs through Cotati and a small part of Rohnert Park, and to encourage a sense of environmental stewardship in the local community.
CCC began as an all-volunteer group in 1998. (Read about our history!) In 2005, CCC received a grant from the California Department of Water Resources to involve the local community in planting native trees and shrubs along a one-mile section of the Laguna de Santa Rosa. Since then over 3,000 volunteers and many partners, collaborators and supporters have been involved in planting, caring for the plants and raising awareness. Volunteers have included people of all ages from three year olds (the Cotati Co-op Nursery School) to high school, Santa Rosa Junior College (SRJC), and Sonoma State University (SSU) students, to professionals and retired people, and a range of community groups.
Here is an outline of our main activities:
- Cotati Creek Critters meet for regular Creek Stewardship days from October to April/May. See current schedule for details. Please join us!
- We welcome opportunities to schedule special workdays for specific groups or classes of 15 or more volunteers.
- We partner with Sonoma State University and Santa Rosa Junior College to offer internships and community involvement opportunities to students.
- CCC's Inside/Outside Nature Education series, featuring local experts, consists of monthly presentations in the fall and winter and guided walks, field trips and bicycle rides in the spring and summer. These events are complemented by a monthly column in the local newspaper, The Community Voice. See Press & Media.
- We offer a presentation to any group that is interested in knowing more about the work of Cotati Creek Critters, what we do and why.
Please contact Outreach Coordinator Jenny Blaker to set up a presentation or organize a workday for your group.
The main way we keep in touch is via email and via this website. To be added to the email list, please contact Jenny Blaker, Outreach Coordinator. You will receive email announcements and reminders of all our events, usually twice a month in the fall and winter, once a month in the summer.
Volunteers: All of Cotati Creek Critters achievements have depended upon the involvement, energy, hard work, and enthusiasm of over 3,000 volunteers - individuals, families, community groups, students and teachers. Thank you for your ongoing support!
 Jenny and Wade
Stewardship Coordinator:Wade Belew organizes and manages every aspect of the restoration project from the native plant nursery to the Creek Stewardship Days. Wade is a lifelong Sonoma County resident and avid outdoor enthusiast. He is a self-employed woodworker with a specialty in designing, building, installing, and maintaining bird nest boxes made from recycled redwood fencing. He also does environmental education and leads interpretive walks for LandPaths and Sonoma County Regional Parks. He is currently President Elect of the California Native Grasslands Association.
Outreach Coordinator:Jenny Blaker is responsible for organizing the community outreach program including volunteer recruitment and the Inside/Outside Nature Education series. Along with Community & Environment Commission members Maria Alvarez and Linda Christopher, and other friends and neighbors, she helped start the Cotati Creek Critters in 1998. She and her husband Neil built the first fully permitted straw bale building in Cotati in 1997. Jenny is a Fellow of the Leadership Institute for Ecology & the Economy. She received her MA in Conservation Psychology, in the program "Action for a Viable Future" at Sonoma State University, in 2006, focusing on the Cotati Creek Critters Outreach Program. Jenny was nominated Cotati Citizen of the Year 2007 by Cotati’s Chamber of Commerce, in recognition of her “dedicated service and involvement in the community” and her “enthusiastic and diligent work” with Cotati Creek Critters.
Sponsors, Partners, Donors, Collaborators ~ CCC works closely with and is deeply appreciative of the support of a number of essential sponsors and partners.
Sponsors:
The Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation, a 501(c) 3 non-profit public benefit corporation is our fiscal sponsor and administers all CCC’s grant funding. See www.lagunadesantarosa.org
The Sonoma County Water Agency was the agency sponsor for the Department of Water Resources grant (see below) and is continuing to support CCC’s project. SCWA is responsible for the flood control channel itself.
The City of Cotati provides CCC’s base of operations at Cotati City well lot #2 (“Ladybug Lot”) on Lakewood Avenue, adjacent to Ladybug Park, and a number of other in-kind contributions.
The California Department of Water Resources provided CCC’s first major grant funding, which supported the planting of 2,000 native trees and shrubs from 2005-8.
The City of Santa Rosa provided Environmental Enhancement funding for an understory restoration project to plant native grasses, sedges and rushes.
USFWS Partners for Fish & Wildlife Program funded aspects of CCC’s outreach and educational programs, 2010-2011.
In November 2011, the Rose Foundation for Communities & the Environment contributed funding for community outreach, environmental education and volunteer recruitment, including to support a new partnership with St. Joseph Health System Sonoma County/Community Benefit Department.
Other organizations which have generously donated funds to support various aspects of the project include:
- Christopher Joseph & Associates (2007, 2008)
- Sonoma Mountain Village (Codding Foundation), (2008)
- California Native Plant Society (2008)
- Sustainable Enterprise Conference (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011)
- Rotary Club of Rancho Cotati (2010, 2011)
Partners:
Many other partners have made essential in-kind contributions to the project.
- STRAW (Students & Teachers Restoring a Watershed, formerly a project of the Bay Institute, now a project of PRBO) and Acorn Soupe, an environmental education organization based in Napa, have both brought hundreds of local elementary school children to the project.
- Many Sonoma State University students and interns from a number of classes, student groups, fraternities and sororities, have contributed to the project in various ways, as have students from Santa Rosa Junior College and local high schools.
- The California Native Plant Society, Appleton Nurseries, Circuit Rider Productions Inc. (now the Center for Environmental Stewardship), Sonoma County Jail Industries and SSU’s plant propagation class have provided plants.
- Many of our used tools have been obtained from Recycletown and Sonoma Mountain Village provided used tree stakes. (See Appropriate Technology, Resources, for further information.) Southern Sonoma Resource Conservation District has lent tools and trash grabbers for Trash Pick Up Days, as have the City of Rohnert Park and Sonoma County Water Agency.
- Many thanks to Oliver’s Market, the Redwood Café, Fregene’s, Cotati Coffee, and Giovanni’s Pizzeria for generously providing refreshments for some of our workdays and other events, and to Clif Bar & Company for supplying us with healthy energy bars for our Creek Stewardship Days.
Cotati Creek Critters has received several awards for our restoration and educational efforts:
- In 2007 Outreach Coordinator Jenny Blaker received the Cotati Citizen of the Year award for her “dedicated service and involvement” in her community and for her “enthusiastic and diligent work with the Cotati Creek Critters.”
- In 2009 Cotati Creek Critters was granted the Outstanding Environmental Education Program award at the 25th anniversary Environmental Awards dinner hosted by Sonoma County Conservation Coalition (SCCC) (March 7, 2009).
- SCAYD (Sonoma County Adult & Youth Development) Family Resource Center honored Wade and Jenny with their environmental award at their Community Awards celebration. (May, 2009)
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- The National Women’s History Project honored Jenny Blaker as one of seven women in Sonoma County to be recognized as “Women taking a lead to save the planet.” (March 21, 2009)
Click here to read more about Honors & Awards |
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Cotati Creek Critters Time-line
| 1998: |
Cotati Creek Critters began as an all-volunteer grass roots citizens group working closely with Cotati’s Community & Environment Commission. |
| 2003: |
Wade Belew and Jenny Blaker wrote a “Baseline Assessment & Habitat Enhancement Feasibility Study of the Cotati Reach of the Laguna de Santa Rosa.” |
| 2005: |
CCC, with help from the Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation staff and other local experts, successfully applied for an Urban Stream Restoration grant from the California Department of Water Resources (DWR). The Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation was the non-profit sponsor, the Sonoma County Water Agency was the Agency sponsor, and the application was supported by the City of Cotati.
Wade Belew became Stewardship Coordinator, Jenny Blaker became Outreach Coordinator, and the grant funding enabled them to establish a base of operations at Cotati City well lot #2, with a plant nursery and a substantial collection of tools and equipment, and to greatly expand outreach efforts. |
| 2006: |
The Inside/Outside Nature Education series began – see Educational Events and related articles listed under Media.
The City of Santa Rosa funded a project to plant an understory of native grasses, sedges, and rushes. This project is ongoing. |
| 2008: |
Hundreds of volunteers and community groups participated in the DWR-funded project, and by May 2008, a one-mile reach had been planted with approximately 1400 native trees and shrubs. |
| 2009: |
The understory project continued and CCC continued to manage existing plantings by pruning, weeding, mulching, etc.
Spring semester: Six interns from SSU's Environmental Studies programs regularly participated in Creek Stewardship Days and took on a range of individual projects, from designing a poster about plastics, to organizing a large Trash PickUp Day for Earth Day in April.
April-May: CCC was in the news for winning three awards!
July-August 2009: CCC and Laguna Foundation partnered with SCAYD to host a six-week Summer Youth Ecology Corps program connecting local youth organizations with environmental restoration programs.
October: CCC hosted an Open House event on the theme “Collaboration for Urban Stream Restoration”. Speakers included California Assemblyman Jared Huffman; Grant Davis and Keenan Foster, Sonoma County Water Agency; David Bannister, Laguna Foundation; Laurette Rogers, the Bay Institute STRAW Project; John Guardino, (then) Mayor of Cotati.
Three interpretive signs, which tell the story of the biology, history and restoration of the Cotati reach of the Laguna, were installed. Approximately 30 people including graphic designers, ecologists and historians, writers and editors, artists and photographers, City and SCWA staff and officials, manufacturers and installers, contributed to the signs. |
| 2010: |
Owing to much reduced funding in the fall of 2010, CCC cut back Creek Stewardship Days to just one per month for the first time since before 2005. As a result, numbers of volunteers participating in events grew, to over 50 or 60 at some workdays. USFWS Partners for Fish & Wildlife Program contributed funding for outreach and education including to support the internship program. |
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| 2011: |
In February the Laguna de Santa Rosa was recognized as a Wetlands of International Importance by the Ramsar Convention. (see www.lagunadesantarosa.org for details).
The numbers of participants attending the Inside/Outside Nature Education series expanded so that we outgrew the classroom at the Cotati Community Center and moved into the Cotati Room, where we hosted larger events including our first fund-raiser, “Dirt the Movie” and a program on the Historical Ecology of the Laguna held in collaboration with the Sonoma Ecology Center and the Cotati Historical Society. |
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Fall 2011/Winter 2012: With funding from Sonoma County Water Agency, we will be expanding our project site to include a new area further downstream, from Gravenstein Way to Commerce Blvd., as well as continuing to maintain the existing site.
Cotati Creek Critters is seeking interns to support our work in the areas of Stewardship and Outreach/Education. See Internship flyer for further details.
As well as our regular Creek Stewardship Days, we can use help for one-time projects, or on a regular, weekly basis if you’re available. We will value and appreciate any time you have to contribute.
1) Staff Ladybug Lot. Staff Ladybug Lot on Creek Stewardship Days. This is a great job for someone who can’t physically manage the other working tasks.
2) Plant Nursery Help. We will be buying most of our plants for this project, but want to propagate or transplant some ourselves. We’ll need thousands of plants for future re-vegetation projects in Cotati. We want to gather seed for sowing, and transplant appropriate plants into containers for use at other sites. If you have experience in plant propagation and care, we can use your help. We also want to feature Ladybug lot as a beautiful demonstration garden of native plants. Regular or drop in help needed.
3) Team Leader for Planting Days. If you have experience planting or would like to learn, we need people that can demonstrate and oversee planting by our various volunteer groups, and generally help out on workdays.
4) Development. If you have experience fund-raising for non-profits we are continually seeking donations and contributions to further our goals.
5) Graphics/signage. We need help with posters, flyers and signs.
6) Photographer. It’s hard to take photos and plant trees, let alone organize a workday! If you can’t do the hard physical work, we’d love to have someone take digital photos that we can use for the website, brochures, etc.
7) Snack chefs. So maybe getting your hands dirty isn’t your thing, or you don’t have time or you’re physically not able to help with other tasks. How’s your baking? We’d love to be able to reward our volunteers with tasty homemade cookies or treats whenever possible.
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