Managing Impact along our Coast and River
Regional Parks River Shuttle
We wrapped up another successful season of the Regional Parks River Shuttle, which shuttles river visitors from Santa Rosa to the Steelhead Regional Park and Sunset River Beach, ever-popular summer swimming and floating destinations. The shuttle, operating every weekend between Memorial Day and Labor Day, carried a total of 1,461 passengers this season, thereby reducing at least that many individual car trips to the river, while alleviating traffic congestion and parking impacts in river neighborhoods on the busy summer weekends.
Leave No Trace partnership expands
In August, nearly 30 volunteers spread out over land and water to clean up trash on the Russian River between Steelhead Beach and Sunset Beach River Park. The land- and kayak-based clean up was hosted as part of our ongoing multi-year partnership with Leave No Trace (LNT) and Sonoma County Tourism, focused on empowering visitors and residents to take actions to be good stewards of Sonoma County's natural resources.
Participants afloat lugged some unusual debris out of the weeds, including a sand-filled sleeping bag, two tires, and a traffic construction sign, and volunteers also filled 12 5-gallon buckets with smaller debris — bottles, cans, small pieces of plastic and other trash.
The Press Democrat covered the event with this article.
Cleaner California Coast
Inspired by our progress at the county level, we've joined Marin and Mendocino counties to launch Cleaner California Coast, a coordinated regional campaign to provide visitor education and outreach aimed at reducing the amount of litter and waste in coastal regions and watersheds. The effort includes federal and state agencies, federally recognized tribes, non-federally recognized tribes, local jurisdictions and land managers, Sonoma County Tourism, and other community-based groups across all three counties.
Read more here.
Wildlife-safe trash and recycling - Stillwater Cove Regional Park
To protect wildlife, we completely replaced trash and recycling infrastructure at Soda Springs Reserve (near Annapolis) and campground food lockers at Stillwater Cove Regional Park, supported by the Sonoma County Regional Parks Foundation and the Sonoma County Fish and Wildlife Commission. Black bears have been seen in Sonoma County and these "bear-safe" improvements prevent bears, and smaller animals like skunks, raccoons and foxes, from becoming habituated to human garbage and food.
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