Watershed Restoration Field Crew
Services offered:
- Community-based creek restoration
- Native plant reintroduction
- Invasive species removal (including wildland weed control)
- Trail management
- Erosion control
- Stormwater management (GSI)
- …and more!
Urban Tilth’s Watershed Restoration Field Crew consists of young adult apprentices who earned permanent employment with Urban Tilth through exceptional work in the classroom and the field during their time in the Basins of Relations Training Program. These young Richmond residents have developed a broad set of knowledge and skills to help steward and restore ecosystems within our community, including native plant identification and propagation, invasive species removal, wildland weed control, erosion control, trail maintenance and stewardship, soil bioengineering, green infrastructure construction and maintenance, creek restoration, and more. The Crew’s capacity for completing sensitive tasks of utmost ecological concern– while also displaying an exemplary commitment to community empowerment– has led to the development of several partnerships with local landowners to provide long-term care and restoration services on public lands, particularly along Wildcat, San Pablo, Codornices and Cerrito Creeks. The Crew’s work emphasizes a whole-watershed approach to ecosystem stewardship; working in different areas of the same watershed is an educational resource and ecologically-sound practice.
Our Crew believes strongly in the power of relationship to achieve true restoration and justice, and as a result focus on restoring ecosystems within the neighborhoods where they live. In consistently returning to the same spaces week after week, year after year, we acknowledge that humans belong in and to the natural world, and that a deep knowing of the natural spaces around us transforms both our bodies and the ecosystems of which we are a part. In other words, restoration is never finished, and there is no upper limit to the good that can be done when humans engage in compassionate relationship with the natural world.
Special thanks to our partners at Contra Costa County Flood Control District, East Bay Regional Parks District, the City of Albany, the City of Richmond (and more!) for their support of our Field Crew.
For more info, or to get in touch with the Field Crew, contact Program Director Nathan Bickart nathan@urbantilth.org or Field Crew Manager Solwazi Allah solwazi@urbantilth.org .