Steward the land

Stewarding the Hillside: What It Looks Like in Practice

• Plant ID, phenology & monitoring

  • Updated Native Plant List & Ongoing Population Monitoring

  • Habitat Identification:Soil, geology, hydrology, and site history analysis

  • In progress: a restoration-focused map of the HNA.

• Restoration approach to date

  • Adaptive stewardship: Learning from the land + Improving practices over time

  • Foundational work: French Broom removal

    • Maintain legacy areas

      • Builds on years of work by Friends of Five Creeks and Trail Trekkers

      • Revisit annually to remove new French broom seedlings

      • Long-lived seed bank (>30 years) requires sustained follow-up

    • Sustain efforts in newly opened areas

      • First 3 years are critical

      • Ongoing management of disturbed soil and heavy seedling recruitment

  • Maintain areas cleared by Measure X crews in upper Madera (thistle and broom removal)

• Triage (like an emergency room): prioritize early weed management, targeting species such as crofton weed, field calendula, and stinkwort before they spread.

Stewarding the Hillside: What It Looks Like in Theory

We are inspired by the Bradley Method (Passive Restoration)

• Developed by bush regenerators, the Bradley sisters, in Australia

• Focuses on working with natural processes, not against them

Core Principles

• Start with healthy native “islands”

• Understand their habitat conditions and ecological context

• Work from best to most degraded areas

• Use minimal disturbance (mainly hand weeding)

• Give native species a competitive advantage

• Allow natural seed set and dispersal

• Let native plants regenerate naturally from the seed bank