November 18 Speaker Series: Fuels to Flows Campaign

November 18, 2025, 7:30pm
Luther Burbank Art and Garden Center, 2050 Yulupa Ave, Santa Rosa

Zoom link to this presentation: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89281080434

Abstract:The Occidental Arts & Ecology Center (OAEC) seeks to “change the rules” with a focus on utilizing low-tech process-based restoration (LTPBR) techniques, such as “gully stuffing”, to restore hydrologic and ecologic processes to riverine systems. This presentation will introduce the OAEC’s Fuels to Flows Campaign, which advances climate-smart nature-based restoration solutions at the nexus of fire and water. This approach advocates for the reintegration of fire and “fuel” load management with the “flows” of the carbon, water, and life cycles. Created in the west as a collaborative approach to the critical need to restore water to the landscape and improve forest resilience to fire, Brock Dolman will share ample project case studies to demonstrate how the Fuels to Flows principles can become a framework for creative low-tech, cost-effective, hands-on solutions to a wide variety of restoration projects around northern California, regardless of the need for fire management.

Bio: Brock Dolman is a wildlife biologist and is internationally recognized as a restoration ecologist and renowned innovator in watershed management and Permaculture design. Brock integrates wildlife biology, native California botany, and watershed ecology with education about regenerative human settlement design, ethno-ecology, and ecological literacy to engender societal transformation. In 1994, Brock co-founded the Sowing Circle, LLC Intentional Community & Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (OAEC), where he continues to act as co-director of OAEC’s Permaculture/Resilient Community Design Program, Wildlands Program, and WATER Institute. He has taught Permaculture courses and consulted on regenerative project design and implementation in 20 countries and widely in the U.S. He has been active in promoting the idea of Bringing Back Beaver in California since the late 1990s, which, in part, has resulted in the creation of the California Department of Fish & Wildlife’s Beaver Restoration Program. His latest effort, based on over 35 years of direct experience, is OAEC’s Fuels to Flows Campaign. Brock graduated in 1992 with honors from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in Agro-Ecology and Conservation Biology.

Milo Baker Chapter General Meetings and Speaker Series are held on the third Tuesday of each month (except for July, August, and December) at 7:30p.m. Meetings are held at the Luther Burbank Art and Garden Center, 2050 Yulupa Ave, Santa Rosa, or via Zoom.