Santa Rosa Junior College’s Wildfire Resilience Program (WRP), based at Shone Farm, offers immersive hands‑on training in natural resources land management tailored to prepare students for ecological fire stewardship. Operating across Shone Farm’s 120-acre forested acreage, participants learn practical skills in thinning, burn pile creation, shaded fuel break construction, invasive species control, restorative plantings, and long‑term treatment monitoring—all as part of the NRM 145A/B courses in wildfire stewardship and ecological restoration. The curriculum emphasizes the safe use and maintenance of tools—including chainsaws, wood chippers, brush cutters, and GPS mapping devices—to conduct fuel reduction operations and manage vegetation in ways that reduce wildfire risk while restoring ecosystem health.
Since its launch in fall 2021, the program has trained ten cohorts of land stewards, with the next cohort scheduled to convene in August 2025 for the Fall semester via NRM 145A (Stewardship Practices for Wildfire Resilience). A $500,000 grant from PG&E settlement funds awarded by Sonoma County underwrote three years of programming—including paid internships (5–10 per year) at Shone Farm and stipends or credit placements with external partners like Audubon Canyon Ranch and Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation. WRP was piloted with instruction by Annie Madden, Asa Voight, and Anthony Blondin; Thea Carlson, Alison Pollack, and Bill Basquin came on board as instructors in subsequent years.
The program was created in direct response to the devastation caused by local wildfires and reflects SRJC’s commitment to training the next generation of stewards who understand ecological and landscape-based fire prevention. Through direct experience in strategies such as prescribed grazing, defensible space landscaping, and forest fuel reduction, students develop the technical and ecological literacy needed to mitigate fire risk across Sonoma County’s diverse ecosystems. SRJC’s goal is to cultivate a skilled workforce capable of doing the critical preventative work—what county leaders call “fighting fire without firefighters”—that supports resilient, healthy land and community safety for years to come.
Questions
Contact the Agriculture/Natural Resources program with questions about the Wildfire Resilience Program by emailing agnrinfo@santarosa.edu and send an email to get on our mailing list at epacopac@santarosa.edu.