|
Cotati Creek Critters began as an all-volunteer, grassroots citizens group in 1998, when the City of Cotati completed a bike path and built a bike bridge over the Laguna de Santa Rosa channel just north of East Cotati Avenue. For the construction to take place, soil had to be removed and fill brought in, and in the process the creek banks were laid bare. [Jenny to provide photo]
Biologist Maria Alvarez and Linda Christopher were members of Cotati’s Community & Environment Commission which had already been involved with tree planting projects elsewhere in Cotati. Together with local residents including Jenny Blaker (now Outreach Coordinator for CCC) they asked the City of Cotati and Sonoma County Water Agency for permission to plant native trees and shrubs along the banks of the Laguna channel. From then onwards, Cotati Creek Critters have met on the second Saturday of every month from October to April to plant and maintain native plants.
Within the next few years the group began to work in other areas as well including along the Laguna channel behind Putnam Park (off Myrtle Avenue) and along Cotati Creek in Delano Park. CCC worked closely with the Community & Environment Commission and they also collaborated on several Earth Day events.
In 2003, Wade Belew (now Stewardship Coordinator) and Jenny Blaker took a class in Watershed Ecology & Restoration at the Santa Rosa Junior College, taught by Karen Gaffney (then of Circuit Rider Productions Inc.) and Bob Coey of the California Department of Fish & Game. As a class project, they walked the three miles of the Laguna channel that runs through Cotati, took photos, studied old maps and aerial photos, did vegetation surveys and drew cross sections, to produce a “Baseline Assessment & Habitat Enhance Feasibility Study of the Cotati Reach of the Laguna de Santa Rosa.” Many studies of the Laguna de Santa Rosa had been written in the previous decades but none included the Cotati reach.
2005: In January 2005, CCC, with help from the Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation staff and other local experts, applied for an Urban Stream Restoration grant from the California Department of Water Resources. 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. CCC’s project was one of 17 out of 91 to be successful, and one of only 10 to be fully funded. We received a grant of $169,000 to involve the local community in planting native trees and shrubs along the upper reach of the Laguna de Santa Rosa.
Since then we have also applied for and received an Environmental Enhancement grant from the City of Santa Rosa to fund a restoration project to plant native grasses and sedges, and a non-profit grant from the City of Cotati to fund a Vegetation Management Plan and our educational program, the Inside/Outside Nature Education Series.
Also read about our achievements to date!
|
