Expanding the educational opportunities for children in poor, rural parts of Nicaragua and El Salvador is the focus of a low profile Sonoma-based non-profit.

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Seeds of Learning was started 18 years ago by two Sonoma County men, Todd Evans and Patrick Rickon, based on their own experiences in Central America. {mp3remote}http://media.krcb.org/audio/nbr/founders.mp3{/mp3remote}

Although they are no longer involved in running the daily operations of the organization, Executive Director Annie Bacon says both men continue to actively participate in the group’s international projects.

The Seeds of Learning volunteers have been warmly, if somewhat quizzically welcomed by the people in Nicaragua and El Salvador, Bacon says, with little regard for the region’s difficult history with the United States government.

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Equador

Just as doctors move quickly to detect and treat infectious diseases before they can spread, botanists and habitat managers are teaming up to use the same approach against invasive weeds in the Bay Area.
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California Invasive Weeds Awareness Week (CIWAW)is July 20-26, 2009. This  an annual event that brings attention to the problems caused by invasive plants in California (such as the yellow star thistle, shown in flower at right), and to the work of local groups that work to protect our natural areas and rangelands. In 2004, the state legislature signed a proclamation declaring California Invasive Weeds Awareness Week to begin the third Monday of July each year.

Arundo dorax, above, spreading rapidly in the middle reach of the Russian River, and threatening to become established downstream as well.

Dan Gluesenkamp, is Director of Habitat Protection and Restoration for the multiple preserves owned and managed by Audubon Canyon Ranch, explains that the basis methods employed by the BAEDN are those used by his and other, like-minded organizations, but scaled up to work on a regional basis.

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Additionally, says Gluesenkamp, the new parternship is dedicated to operating in accordance with two key core principles.

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Goals of the Bay Area Early Detection Network include:

• Have effective detection efforts covering the nine counties.
• Ensure that detections are supported with sufficient response funds to eradicate priority invaders while still cost-effective.
• Increase effectiveness and strategic nature of invasive plant work in the region.
• Involve and train citizen detection partners.
• Realize a coordinated system of regional Early Detection networks across all California.

In Sonoma County, ludwigia is one of the most conspicuous invasive plants, growing agressively in the Laguna de Santa Rosa and in slow-moving portions of the Russian River, as seen in the foreground below.

YouthBuild, an education and job training program for young people in the Santa Rosa area, is going green.

Many of the recent YouthBuild graduates like to return and visit the current class, and Program Director Casey McChesney welcomes them as walking role models for the youth who are developing their own ideas of what success could represent for them.

You can hear a previous North Bay Report about YouthBuild from December 2008 here.

Permaculture - an idea that began around sustainable agriculture - is moving into the urban environment.

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  You can also learn more about this subject at the Oakland-based Urban Permaculture Guild.

Dave Henson, Executive Director of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (right), explains that interest in permaculture arose in part in response to the widespread dominance of "monoculture," or large-scale farming of a single crop.

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One of the enduring examples of crop integration is indigenous to Mexico and the American southwest, and known colloquially as the "three sisters."

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