LandPaths' View on the Ongoing Threat to Parks in Sonoma County

Parks are our most essential "commons" and we all simply cannot allow them to be closed and made off limits to our community.  Period, end of story.

While the issue will continue to morph over the coming months and years with budget allotments, federal mandates and possible park-funding legislation or bond measures, the essential story line that parks are going continue to be underfunded – with resulting reduced programs for our people and stewardship for the land – requires of us to come up with new paradigms that are solution-oriented and imbued with an old fashioned can-do attitude.

Why are parks so important? Right now we must all consider that a) driving farther to recreate contributes to melting our planet’s ice caps, b) our kids are increasingly obese and many would stay indoors to be hypnotized by every manner of entertainment, and most importantly, c) we know that having a connection with nature close to where we live profoundly, and in so many ways, betters us as people and aids the natural world.  This happens in no small way by the choices we make because of knowingland, water, farming and the beauty and fragility of the wilds.  Plus, more parks now means more places for wildness to exist and watersheds to function as watersheds providing clean water to all living things! 

Please, continue to pay attention and lean into that act of participatory citizenry that makes our country, this state and in particular Sonoma County great.

LandPaths and the Promise

We are working closely on this issue with our sister nonprofits, public park and open space agencies and elected officials to advocate for fully funded parks at all levels: city, county and state.  However, it is LandPaths opinion that for starters that it’s going to take more than funding to fix parks, and that we need to not just sustain parks at their current understaffed levels…but to recreate what parks truly should be with engaging interpretive programs, school groups using them daily and as places that are safe and welcoming for people of all ages and abilities.  

Ultimately, this provides an enormous opportunity for a close collaboration between public agencies and nonprofits such as LandPaths.  That is, we will all have to bring our core competencies to the table - public park agencies with their land management might and know how, law enforcement and fire management and response – and nonprofits with their ability to provide programs to thousands of residents, rally the community in creative ways and to be the eyes and ears on the trail and beyond.  

Since the announcements were made regarding the closure of Annadel, Jack London and Sugarloaf Ridge State Parks, I have met or spoken by phone with Santa Rosa City Parks Director Mark Richardson, three of our County supervisors, Assemblymembers Michael Allen and Jared Huffman, State Senator Noreen Evans and US Representative Lynn Woolsey’s  staff.  They all share the urgency of keeping our public lands open to our people and the natural systems that provide this incredible opportunity to connect with the land healthy!  

Through LandPaths combined volunteer and staff sweat equity investments (aka "People Power") we have been able to actually open new parks (Willow Creek, Grove of the Old Trees and others) and we are humbled by the fact that we currently manage public use – and in many places provide land stewardship – at parks at the city, county and state level.  Specifically, we work with our sister agencies in providing access and volunteer stewardship on over 6000 acres alone in Sonoma County – some of those being private lands that are funded solely by the community. 

In the past 10 years in particular we have piloted the new "free permit for use in exchange for your help in stewarding."  While all of us would rather these lands be fully funded and open as parks historically were, we realize that if we did not step up to provide for these people-powered-parks that a number of these parks would never have opened in the first place.  We stepped in originally in 1997 to manage otherwise closed parks – and the need has continued to grow.  

In fact, the 3400-acre "People Powered" Willow Creek addition to Sonoma Coast State Park – which LandPaths is proud to work closely with State Parks in managing – has never been considered for the closure list.  This is because Willow Creek is supported by the local community through donations and by physical work on the land.  This is the LandPaths Promise.  

There is an up side to LandPaths’ style of park management: it connects people to land in ways that improve the quality of life.  

We at LandPaths feel that we are doing what we can to connect our community with land by providing access for boots, bikes, horses and wheelchairs – and to do that for people in our region of all ages, ethnicities, interests and means.  Thank you for your support of LandPaths and its work in our community.