The Bohemian Collective

The Bohemian Collaborative is a Safer West County (501.3.c) subcommittee consisting of large parcel landowners (~50+ acres) surrounding the Dutch Bill Creek watershed and the adjacent watersheds/”firesheds” of Green Valley, Willow Creek/Coleman Valley, and Salmon Creek/Tannery Creeks.

The group has a collective interest in a healthy forest for nature and people. While the group does not take away individual property rights, the Bohemian Collective understand that collectively, we have a more significant impact, and our mitigation of risks depends on each other. We will be stronger when people come together.

These landowners, representing over 20,000 acres, have joined together to work at a landscape/watershed level rather than parcel by parcel. This approach is critical for stewarding these biodiverse ecosystems and improving the resilience of the communities that adjoin them.

This group stewards many of the forests and watersheds that adjoin the WUI communities of Graton, Forestville, Guerneville, Monte Rio, Camp Meeker, Occidental, Freestone,
Bodega and
Bodega Bay.

By joining collaboratively, the Bohemian Collaborative will not only have a positive impact on the health of environmentally critical watersheds but also on these nearby communities.

The collective’s accumulated knowledge from prior forest plans, timber harvest plans, and resource management plans creates a hub for informed decision-making.

The Bohemian Collaborative intends to apply for funding to hire necessary support, to fill in the gaps in existing plans, and to create a landscape-level stewardship plan that identifies a series of projects to improve the thriving ecosystem of these watersheds and forests, decrease fire risks and prioritize good, local, family-sustaining jobs. This Stewardship Plan will be the basis for collective grant applications to fund identified projects.

Desired Outcomes

The Stewardship Plan will include a list of prescribed treatments to achieve the following desired forest conditions:

•  Maintain and improve the long-term forest health across vegetation
types, creating resilient forest systems capable of enduring biotic and abiotic stresses such as drought, fire, and insect and pathogen infestation.
•  Create a more fire-resilient landscape by reducing dead and dying trees and restoring, where possible, the forest to more fire-resilient vegetation types and vegetation distribution to limit the effects of wildfire.
•  Identify the best areas to create and maintain shaded fuel breaks to protect our properties from low-intensity fires; improve firefighter ability to protect the neighborhood in the event of a large fire, and specify type of treatment to achieve the fuel breaks.
•  Identify existing and abandoned roads throughout our area that can create a network of ingress and egress for firefighters in the event of a wildfire in our forests.
•  Support growth and health of older trees in forest to remediate effects of past clearcut logging.
•  Prioritize treatments that can improve and support the health of
our groundwater and seasonal waterways and creeks—including erosion control and water retention that also protects or improves the quality of instream aquatic habitat.
•  Identify and control invasive plants.
•  Support local resilience through long term careers in restoration.
•  Support wildlife diversity in our area by improving and restoring native habitats.
•  Ensure prescribed treatments care for the plants that provide food sources for wildlife and protect migration corridors where possible. 


The plan will also identify potential funding sources as well as treatments likely to be funded to help the Collaborative do the massive work of restoration and later maintenance across this large territory. It will also create a framework for tracking actions and improvements as well as learnings for future generations.

Stewardship Plan Costs

Stewardship Plan Costs: To move efficiently and effectively at this scale, the Steering Committee recommends the following action plan and funding:

• $25,000 estimate FUNDED – Technical drafting of Stewardship Plan – Any official plan needs to be authored by a Registered Forester. Goldridge RCD has offered to write the plan or pay for the requisite forester, contributing approximately $25,000+ to our efforts.


• $150,000-$300,000 estimate FUNDED – Submission of CEQA work (California Environmental Quality Act) – Goldridge RCD has offered to create the requisite documents, including field surveying of project areas to be submitted, and act as the lead agency for our project covering anywhere from $150k to $300k of costs depending on the projects selected.


• $25,000 – $35,000 estimate NEEDS FUNDING – Project Management – Guided by the Bohemian Collaborative Steering Committee and working in parallel with Goldridge, to meet our aggressive timeline for spring grant writing, it is essential to have a project manager hired who can recommend and manage milestones, compile, organize, and summarize existing plans from participating landowners, and execute meetings with fire and funding agencies to ensure the plan is robust and well supported.


• $10,000-$15,000 estimate – NEEDS FUNDING – Technical Mapping – Technical support from Madronus for mapping that will support the Stewardship Plan and eventual grant writing. This will include vegetation density, historical fire and weather patterns, vegetation types, and other risk analysis to prioritize projects and support proposed projects getting grant funding. This will be paid hourly and is only an estimate and Madronus has offered their hourly fees at deeply discounted rates for this endeavor.

• $5,000 estimate – FUNDED – Professional Grant Writer – Alliance Redwoods has funded a professional grant writer to help draft and submit the group’s grants twice over the past three years at a cost of approximately $5,000 to $6,000 each time, which they continue to offer to support the Bohemian Collaborative’s success.