Siskiyou Land Trust

Programs: The siskiyou land trust is a local non-profit land conservation organization based in mount shasta, california and working in klamath cascade mountain region of siskiyou county. The land trust works with willing land owners and other conservation partners towards long-term stewardship of agricultural lands, forest lands, and wildlands in siskiyou county. The organization does this through acquisition of land and conservation easements, and permanent stewardship of those assets. Land trusts are a-political organizations that offer a place for communities and landowners to work together toward local conservation projects that have regional, national, and global benefits. Siskiyou land trust currently owns nine conservation easements that cover over6,800-acres of land and several miles of river. In addition, siskiyou land trust owns four fee title lands of more than 80 acres. Responsibility as an easement holder and landowner include annual monitoring, meeting with landowners, preparingmonitoring reports, and addressing potential easement infractions or questions fromlandowners. Responsibilities as a landowner include managing natural resource assetsthrough annual maintenance plans and volunteer events. In addition to open space,scenic, and water conservation, our fee owned lands generally provide for some typeof public access, trail, garden or greenway. Acquisition and stewardship projectsfacilitated by siskiyou land trust include a multitude of educational and volunteeropportunities. In 2016/2017, 100 volunteers regularly assisted the organization toachieve its goals, logging more than 3,500 hours. Garden greenway: this new local greenway acquisition located across from sissonmeadow, sisson school and mt. Shasta library is currently serving as a greenway thathosts a community garden, the land trust office, open space, and wetlands. The concept plan is complete for the 3 acre plot located adjacent to the mount shasta mid-town bicycle route . The plan incorporates trails, pathways, school gardens, an outdoor learning area, greenhouse, and an orchard. In 2016/17, volunteers continued to work on trails, the edible alley, the community orchard and improving the garden site. Rainbow ridge: siskiyou land trust continued to facilitate the purchase of aconservation easement over 600 acres of forest in the middle of rainbow ridge topermanently protect the city of mount shastas scenic viewshed and the lands forest. Land trust and partners continued to engage the community in conversation aboutcommunity forestry through an educational workshop series and technical assistancepartnerships. The focus of the community forestry project is approximately 1,400acres of private land on rainbow ridge that lies between the city of mount shasta and the shasta trinity national forest. Federal land managers also participated in the educational series, expanding the geographic scope of forest stewardship dialogue to over 5,000 acres of land near the interstate-5 corridor. Scott valley ranch protection: slt closed a conservation easement project that provides protection of a 1,116 acres of agricultural land and scott river corridor that hosts a key spawning and rearing habitat for threatened coho salmon. Received state and federal grant approvals to acquire a conservation easement. City park to downtown greenway: the interim city park to downtown trail segment through city park and kingston meadow has been completed through the work of several organizations and hundreds of hours of volunteer labor. Sisson meadow: siskiyou land trust and its lead stewards hosted several volunteerclean-up and repair days to take care of the meadow boardwalk, bridge, picnic bencharea, bird houses, invasive weeds, and kiosk. A new sign was installed at the castle street engrance and enhancements were made to the picnic area. The first bird walk and birdhouse building competition were held in partnership with raven tree wild bird and nature shop. Hammond pond: siskiyou land trust volunteers monitored nesting sandhill cranes,provided trash pick-up, and posted new signage to share history and background of the land. Field trips: siskiyou land trust hosted a field trip series for its core volunteersto connect them to the lands the organization conserved and the landowners who worked for years to conserve them. Winter slideshow series: siskiyou land trust hosted is 7th annual winter slideshow series from november through may, sharing stories of travel, wilderness, and land conservation.