Mini-Workshop: Innovations of The Ojai Valley Firesafe Council
Part of our "Can We Rehydrate California?" workshop series. April 30th 8:30am Pacific Time
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"Can We Rehydrate California?" Mini Workshop:
Innovations of the Ojai Valley Fire Safe Council
April 30th, 8:30 AM PST with Didi Pershouse and Chris Danch
This week we will discuss the Ojai Valley Fire Safe Council (OVFSC), a community-driven organization promoting wildfire safety and resilience in an area ranked in the top 1% nationally for wildfire risk (top 3% in California). The OVFSC is leading a paradigm shift from the old regime of “Command & Control" to a new regime of “Integration" that emphasizes:
● Enhancing wildland mitigation measures with proper adaptive responses at the community level
- An ongoing prescribed grazing program that provides: reduced fuel loads at landscape level, enhanced defensible space, improved firefighter safety and access, enhanced watershed function and tie ins to local food and fiber production. The program includes development of "The Corridor" - a Wildfire Intensity Reduction Zone around the Ojai Valley, and a prescribed grazing curriculum for local schools in partnership with Grazing School of the West, and Shepherdess Land & Livestock.
- An interactive online portal that provides over 100 data layers including critical species habitat, riparian corridors, structure density, Red Cross shelters, land use, and critical infrastructure, as well as LIVE data on current wildfire locations, Red Flag Warnings, and EPA Air Quality Index forecasts.
● Vulnerable grid dependency affecting resilience during power outages
OVFSC Executive Director Chris Danch will give a presentation, and we will discuss the project through a place-sourced perspective.
Christopher Danch is the executive director of the Ojai Valley Fire Safe Council (OVFSC). Chris has a broad, diverse background in law, business, education, environmental issues, and community service.
When Chris is not working on wildfire risk mitigation and community resilience, he maintains a small part-time practice of law, with an emphasis on providing general counsel to select non-profit and for- profit organizations, including those involved in regenerative agriculture. He is currently a legal advisor to California Farmlink in the area of prescribed grazing and regenerative agriculture. Chris previously worked as a consultant in agroforestry development and alternative energy with an emphasis on biomass energy utilizing pyrolytic conversion and gasification technologies. He recently was part of a consulting team to the Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety, the state agency tasked with regulation of the Wildfire Mitigation Plans required of California investor-owned electrical utilities.
He has over 42 years of legal experience including the areas of strategic legal planning and consultation, business law, nonprofit organizations, environmental, agriculture and natural resource management, international law, construction, and real estate/land use. He has 25 years of direct litigation experience at both the federal and state level, with jury and non-jury trials, class actions, complex (multi-jurisdictional) litigation, judicial and non-judicial arbitration, administrative proceedings, mediation, and appeals.
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Your Instructor
Didi Pershouse is well known as an innovative international educator both in-person and online. She is the founder of the Land and Leadership Initiative. Her facilitator's guide Understanding Soil Health and Watershed Function is used in over 90 countries.
She became deeply involved in the intersection of food systems and health systems while providing rural health care for two decades at The Center for Sustainable Medicine, and wrote The Ecology of Care: Medicine, Agriculture, Money, and the Quiet Power of Human and Microbial Communities.
She has written a field training manual for the UN-FAO Farmer Field School Program and the Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming Initiative in India, involving over 1,000,000 smallholder farmers. She was a contributing author to The Climate Emergency: How Africa Can Survive and Thrive; Climate Change and Creation Care; and Health in the Anthropocene. She was one of five speakers at the United Nations-FAO World Soil Day in 2017.
She serves on the Planning Commission for her town, is a board supervisor for the White River Natural Resources Conservation District, and is on the board of directors of Regenerate Earth, Soil Carbon Coalition and the Vermont Healthy Soils Coalition. While serving on the state appointed Payment for Ecosystem Services and Soil Health Working Group, she helped to reorient the program back to its public roots. She led a successful effort to conserve the Zebedee Headwaters Wetland while serving as a Vermont Conservation Commissioner.
She is on the Vision Council of the Global Earth Repair Convergence, and a member of the Ecosystem Restoration Alliance. She is a lineage member of the Change Agent Development Community (stewarded by Carol Sanford), and is seeding new communities of practice in a Wisdom tradition that uses living systems thinking.