Join our staff in sending love to the Sierra this Valentine’s Day

With Love from Project Manager Syd Godfrey. When I was a kid I would spend a few weeks every summer in a tent cabin near Yosemite with my parents and sister. These few weeks spent in the Sierra started a lifelong enthusiasm and curiosity about the natural world. Catching bullfrogs, watching bats, listening to owls, and sitting around a campfire as a five-yea, turned into a career made up of surveying Red Legged frog populations, mist netting for bats, surveying for Northern spotted owls, and working night shifts lighting backfires on one of the Sierra’s biggest wildfires. For a long time, life kept me apart from the Sierras, but like all things life changes and has brought me back to the place that gave me some of the best memories and continues to inspire me to work towards creating a more resilient, healthy Sierra. Working on our forest and meadow health projects has allowed me to feel like I am giving back to the place that has given me so much. I’m looking forward to all the exciting work to come at The Sierra Fund and all the benefits it will provide to the Sierra and its communities. 

From the heart, Development and Communications Manager, Laura Carroll. I’ve been a Sierra’n most of my life and it’s a pleasure to live and work in this beautiful region. I’m a “dog mom” and spend much of the warmer months swimming and hiking around the Sierra with my little ball of energy, Carrie the heeler/collie. The Sierra Fund has projects underway to sustain healthy resilient forests and clean waters in my home region that make this a safer place to recreate for me and my fur-baby. I’m also a forager and self-proclaimed myco-phile and in the Spring the Sierra comes to life (with some patient searching) with morel mushrooms. I love that The Sierra Fund and our project partners are advocates for returning beneficial fire to the landscape for many ecological reasons,  including that some morels fruit after a burn. Just one example of how healthy fire supports a biologically diverse region!

Yours truly, TSF Executive Director, Joan Clayburgh. I grew up in the Sierra and my love of the region has grown with me. It started when I was a toddler camping in a canvas tent camper with Grandma Richie and Mom and Dad. I loved running around on granite rocks, fishing for Rainbow Trout with my family, and admiring wildlife. In college, I felt called to environmental advocacy that had my early career mostly in the big cities – and was thrilled when I could move back home to the Sierra and still be an advocate for the earth. Today my growth continues as I learn from The Sierra Fund board members and staff how to best partner with tribes that have stewarded this region for thousands of years and also hatch innovative nature-based ways to restore resiliency to our ecosystems and communities. I feel honored that I get to still grow and learn as I try to give back to help this place I love so much. Every Sierra Sunrise, wild critter, roaring river, storm-fueled wind, and pine stretching to the sky renews my gratitude for this region.