The effort to plant 1,000 oaks on a private ranch in San Luis Obispo County has been well covered in the media. The coverage now also includes a comprehensive feature story with seven color photos in the March 2008 edition of Farmer and Rancher Magazine, a publication of the San Luis Obispo County Farm Bureau.
The story says 60 volunteers from the San Luis Obispo Native Tree committee, Cal Poly, local 4-H and agricultural and community groups joined rancher Jack Varian and UCCE natural resources specialists Bill Tietje and Doug McCreary to plant the oak trees on Varian's ranch.
The project was funded in part from a grant by the Wildlife Conservation Board's Oak Woodland Conservation Act of 2001 and from the Natural Resource Conservation Service cost-share Environmental Quality Incentives Program. The Varian Ranch, which is permanently protected from development by a conservation easement, funded the remainder of the project, including the many hours that Varian and his ranch hands will put in to sustain the trees.
