AmeriCorps NCCC Restores Tolay Creek

January 27, 2016

Contact: Andrew Stanley

Team Media Representative – On site contact

Phone: 508-868-4936

Email: andrewstanley93@outlook.com

AmeriCorps NCCC Restores Tolay Creek

PETALUMA, Calif.– Starting in January, a team of eleven AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) members, known collectively as Blue Seven, will be serving in Petaluma, Calif., assisting Point Blue Conservation Sciences with environmental stewardship projects.

For the past three years, Students & Teachers Restoring A Watershed (STRAW), a program of Point Blue Conservation Science, has orchestrated hundreds of students and volunteers to plant native trees and shrubs along Tolay Creek. This year, STRAW is working with an AmeriCorps NCCC team and local students to install 500 more native plants and complete the restoration project. Tolay Creek, which flows through local ranches, lacks important creek-side vegetation; the native trees and shrubs provide habitation within their canopies for wildlife and prevent erosion along the creek with the presence of the plant life’s roots.

Blue Seven will be engaging with Point Blue to learn about how climate-smart watershed restoration can be a nature-based solution to address negative effects of climate change. The projects will consist of plant and irrigation installation as well as land maintenance. In addition to Blue Seven’s physical duties, the team will be assisting Point Blue staff members by teaching and leading students as well as volunteers who visit their work sites.

In regards to the service work the team will complete, Blue Seven corps member Andrew Stanley said, “I am looking forward to learning about environmental conservation by actively participating in the restoration of Petaluma’s watersheds. The surrounding landscapes of Petaluma and Sonoma County offer scenes of great natural beauty which will encourage my team and I to work our hardest to preserve the community’s environment.”

The AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) and its FEMA Corps units engage 2,800 young Americans in a full-time, 10-month commitment to service each year. AmeriCorps NCCC members address critical needs related to natural and other disasters, infrastructure improvement, environmental stewardship and conservation, and urban and rural development; FEMA Corps members are solely dedicated to disaster preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery work. The programs are administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). CNCS is the federal agency that engages more than five million Americans in service through its AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, Social Innovation Fund, and Volunteer Generation Fund programs, and leads President’s national call to service initiative, United We Serve. For more information, visit NationalService.gov.

###

AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps Pacific Region

3427 Laurel Street, McClellan, CA 95652 ~Phone: (916) 640-0306 ~Fax: (916) 640-0318