The Sierra Nevada Group of the Sierra Club announces the next public program on Thursday March 30, 2023  from 6:30 – 8:30pm at Seaman’s Lodge Pioneer Park Nevada City.  Our featured speaker will be Mia Monroe, a long time Park Ranger at Muir Woods National Monument.

Muir Woods National Monument
Muir Woods National Monument

The program entitled “Muir Woods National Monument is an example of leadership in thoughtful environmental stewardship” is a mere opener for Mia who passionately continues her career at Muir Woods beginning in 1982.  

As she said in her interview when she received the Bay Nature Local Hero Award:

I feel so fortunate to work in a place that’s so beautiful and so nurturing and makes my spirit soar. I’m a little unusual in that I’m a career ranger and I’m still working in the field. My office has green walls. I breathe in the fresh air, I see the cycles of nature, I greet the first spring flowers and the nesting birds.

I’ve been here when redwoods have fallen. To contemplate something that’s been standing for hundreds of years taking a new position in the forest – the smell and how soon afterwards the birds and butterflies find the new sunny spot, and seeing all the redwoods grow to that new light – there’s something about the change in a forest that’s truly awesome. I’ve been here when the salmon are spawning; it’s thrilling to see them make their way up the stream, to witness that ancient ritual of the spawning cycle.

And then, I’ve taken a lot of young people through here. I can hardly wait to introduce them to their first banana slug or show them how to find a redwood seed or show them where to go to find a flower or a butterfly, to show kids how to find those clues so they feel comfortable being their own explorers in nature.

So that’s really been my work for these many years – to be part of the teams that re-weave the ecosystem here and to help actively engage citizens in that process. It’s been a dawning awareness that we have to take care of not just the individual redwoods but also the forest and the watershed.