Gold Ridge Resource Conservation District
The Gold Ridge RCD primarily serves Sonoma County but its jurisdiction also extends to Northern Marin. This RCD provides free assistance to ranchers, farmers, educators, and anyone with land-based resource conservation needs.
Many of their environmental stewardship projects have direct or indirect benefits to monarch butterflies and other creatures.
Among the projects they support are wildlife stewardship, as well as woodland and forestry management. They address soil erosion control and soil health improvement. And they work on watershed and stream enhancement. They achieve their goals by providing technical assistance, outreach, education and project implementation.
Gold Ridge RCD jurisidiction
Consultation on a project (source: GRRCD)
One focus of the Gold Ridge RCD is growing and planting milkweed. This is a crucial aspect of monarch restoration, since monarch butterflies only lay their eggs on milkweed and monarch caterpillars only eat milkweed.
Gold Ridge has supplied and delivered thousands of narrowleaf milkweed plants across the North Bay region to farms, school gardens, and public lands.
The Gold Ridge RCD has also participated in other conservation efforts such as overwintering site management and monarch monitoring.
Gold Ridge RCD Milkweed Distribution Map
In addition to growing and planting milkweed, Gold Ridge also supports the habitat of pollinators in general. As is the case with the Marin RCD, a part of this work involves creating hedgerows, as well as field borders and flowering crop covering mixes. Riparian and farm pond revegetation is also important.
Insectaries for Pollinators: A Pilot Project
Gold Ridge collaborated with several other organizations on a pilot project designed to enhance pollinator habitat on seven working farms. The farms differed from each other on many dimensions, and included a vineyard, a cattle ranch, and several organic vegetable crop farms.
Crucially, the goal of the project was to enhance pollinator habitat (particularly bees) while also increasing farm yield and profit.
The pilot project involved planting over 6,100 plants on 2 acres of pollinator habitat (Photo: GRRCD)
Designing these pollinator habitats required careful attention to flower shapes, colors, and bloom times. A list of plant species used in the project can be found here. Most are California natives; a few of these are shown below.
Ceonothus “Julia Phelps”
Eriogonum fasciculatum
Salvia mellifera
Symphyotrichum chilense
Spiraea douglasii
Baccharis pilularis