Wildlands
The Place
The 70-acre Wildlands Preserve serves as OAEC’s living learnscape for stewardship and wildtending methods that integrate traditional ecological knowledge with modern science.
Over the past twenty years, staff and volunteers have been steadily working to help the land restore itself to exhibit the healthy, self-willed ecological processes it had before European settlement brought clear cuts and invasive exotic plants just 130 years ago.
The Program
We provide education about restoration theory and methods, integrating traditional ecological knowledge with modern science.
Our goal is to become better practitioners of cultural and biological regeneration. Through demonstration, research and education, the OAEC Wildlands Restoration Program promotes wildlands ecoliteracy and helps to restore awareness that humans must be an integral, interconnected and regenerative component of natural systems, both locally and at the larger landscape scale.
Wildlands News
Watch Brock’s Firesafe Sonoma Talk: Fuels to Flows
Brock Dolman, Ecologist and Director of the OAEC Wildlands program, gave an online presentation for FireSafe Sonoma on May 23rd, 2023 introducing the concept of “Fuels to Flows” – turning … Read more
YES Magazine highlights Climate Justice In Sonoma County
April 24, 2023 – YES Magazine published an excellent article by our friend and photojournalist Brooke Anderson that features OAEC’s collaboration with North Bay Jobs with Justice (NBJwJ) and workers from their Farmworker … Read more
Watch OAEC’s Short Film for the UN Decade of Restoration
From “drought to deluge,” we are facing the drastic swings of the climate crisis – and grappling with how to respond. At OAEC, we hold an active and hopeful vision … Read more
Celebrating the 5 “Kindoms” on iNaturalist!
Did you know OAEC is home to over 127 species of fungi, 326 species of animalia and 290 species of plantae? Since 2003, Brock Dolman, Director of the OAEC Wildlands … Read more
NBC news – Intersection of Fire & Water at OAEC
“It’s time to take our fire fears and connect that with our water woes!” – Brock Dolman As we thin and limb our forests and landscapes towards fire fuels reduction, … Read more
