OAEC supports diverse communities to design their own regenerative systems at the regional and local scale.
Our cookbook is a collection of inventive recipes inspired by seasonal eating from our biodiverse Mother Garden, orchards and Wildlands Preserve.
Experience the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center through beautiful slideshows of our Guest Houses, Meeting Hall, Kitchen, Garden, Wildlands and more.
OAEC serves as a retreat center for networks, public agencies, foundations and other groups working towards social and environmental change.
Our 100% Certified Organic plant nursery specializes in open-pollinated perennials including edible landscaping plants, rare and endangered food crops, drought tolerant ornamentals and habitat plants - all tested in our onsite gardens and appropriate for our bioregion.
OAEC offers the longest consistently running two-week Permaculture Design Certification course in the West. Immerse yourself in information, ideas and inspiration on how to design sustainable, regenerative systems in balance with your home ecosystem.
Kate Lundquist (She/Her) co-directs the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center’s WATER Institute and the Bring Back the Beaver Campaign in Sonoma County, California. Kate is a conservationist, educator, ecological artist and wildland tender. Kate collaborates with landowners, communities, conservation organizations and resource agencies to uncover obstacles, identify strategic solutions, and generate restoration recommendations to assure healthy watersheds, water security, listed species recovery and climate change resiliency. In addition to providing species management consultations, Kate writes about and gives presentations across the west on the importance of beaver stewardship to watershed restoration.
On Staff Since: 2005 Email > Phone: x118
I manage the WATER Institute’s Bring Back the Beaver Campaign, conduct research, run our citizen-science initiatives, educate the public through presentations, and collaborate with multi-stakeholder groups and decision-makers to advocate for policy change. I help implement and write about the appropriate technologies that make up our Conservation Hydrology Demonstration Site. I sit on the Advisory Board of The Beaver Institute.
Water is life, so I’m helping others to cultivate hydrologic literacy and adopt innovative strategies to restore and protect the watersheds we live in. By modifying our behavior to lessen impacts on this precious resource, we can ensure greater food and water security and improve climate change resiliency for all.
I am a life-long learner and artist. I contribute to watershed health through making functional art with natural materials. I deepen my knowledge of the ecology of place through tending and harvesting and preserving the wild foods, medicines and materials each ecosystem generously provides. I gather and process local domestic and wild materials (wool, gourds, wood, pine needles, shells, antler and brain-tanned hides) to make felted, woven and hand sewn clothing, footwear, vessels, bags, straps and adornments. Every year I take several weeks to “go feral”—to wander in the mountains and the desert, relying as much as possible on things I have made myself. I do all of this alongside amazing colleagues, friends, family and my partner Kevin.
I have become much more resilient in life and effective in my work through a self-inquiry process called The Work of Byron Katie.
“Don’t believe everything you think.”
I can’t be an effective Earth steward if I don’t take good care of myself. Whether it’s in my wood-fired outdoor bathtub or the many wild hot springs I visit annually, soaking in hot water is by far the most rejuvenating practice I know. I backpack in the wilderness several times a year. I feed my desire for deepening my skill set by regularly attending and sometimes teaching at ancestral skills gatherings across the west. Giving myself periods of unstructured time to just be is one of my favorite forms of medicine.