Welcome to the first issue of Sonoma Land Trust TODAY! Each month, we will bring you up-to-the-minute news about happenings at your land trust. We hope you enjoy TODAY!

Celebrate food and land with SLT at Slow Food Nation

Fifty thousand people from around the world will converge on San Francisco next month for Slow Food Nation — the largest celebration of food in America — and the Sonoma Land Trust will be there. Among the many offerings at this unprecedented event paying homage to sustainably produced local and seasonal food will be a Slow Hike at the Sonoma Baylands and a Slow Dinner at Aziza in San Francisco, both put on by the Sonoma Land Trust. Our Slow Hike filled quickly, but a few spaces are still available for our delicious Mediterranean/Moroccan Slow Dinner on August 29 — and you don’t have to be a conference-goer to attend. (Special thanks to SLT board member Mary Hafner for contributing Hafner Vineyard’s award-winning wine to the dinner.)

Join us at the table!

$50,000 provided to build education pavilion at the Baylands

The J. M. Long Foundation has granted the Sonoma Land Trust $50,000 to help support construction of the Sonoma Baylands Education Pavilion. The Land Trust acquired thousands of acres adjacent to San Pablo Bay to launch one of the largest wetlands restoration projects in the nation. The education pavilion will be a gathering place to focus education and stewardship efforts for this region. It will provide an enriching staging ground for school groups, restoration volunteers and the general public to interact with and learn about the land. The facility will also serve as an onsite conference location for natural resource managers, and provide educational displays and materials to heighten hikers’ experiences as they set out on the San Francisco Bay Trail. This grant, along with other generous funding from the Bothin Foundation, Rockey Fund of the Marin Community Foundation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, leaves just $125,000 remaining to be raised before construction can begin.

Make a secure online gift to help build the pavilion

August 2008
In This Issue
	SLT & Slow Food Nation
	Building a pavilion
	Enjoying the land
	Field archeology
	BayNature.org

Enjoying the land

There are many ways to get out on the land and support your land trust! You can sign up for one of our many stewardship volunteer outings, join our conservation easement monitoring team, participate in “Go-to Gang” activities (construction work, infrastructure maintenance projects, etc.), collect plant list and bird data, provide event support, tabling assistance, and much more. For more information, please call:
(707) 544-5614, ext. 2 or email: volunteer@
sonomalandtrust.org.

See a full schedule of volunteer activities

Archeology course offered on SLT land

Santa Rosa Junior College is offering a course in field archeology — for lay people and avocational archeologists alike — that will be taught largely at the Land Trust’s Little Black Mountain Preserve in Cazadero. It’s a rare and affordable opportunity to gain experience with historic and prehistoric resources.

Learn more

Your gateway to nature

A new Web site, BayNature.org, is the place to go to learn about all things related to Bay Area nature. Discover great places to visit, choose from hundreds of nature-related events (including SLT’s), read weekly features about local plants and animals, connect with more than 300 nature-focused organizations, and much more. It’s a great starting point for launching your exploration of Bay Area nature!

Go to BayNature.org