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Our Mission:

Tuleyome was founded in 2002 as a volunteer advocacy-oriented nonprofit conservation organization. Our mission statement reads: “Tuleyome engages in advocacy and active stewardship with diverse communities to conserve, enhance, restore, and enjoy the lands in the region.”   We serve communities mainly throughout Yolo, Lake, Napa, Mendocino, Solano, Glenn and Colusa Counties, but also do outreach in Sacramento County.

Our Vision:

People protect, restore, and enjoy the natural landscape in the Northern Inner Coast Range.

Our History in Brief:

In the past, Tuleyome spearheaded the formal California State Wild and Scenic River designation for upper Cache Creek and worked with local Congressman Mike Thompson and Senator Barbara Boxer to designate Cedar Roughs and Cache Creek Wilderness Areas and additions to the Snow Mountain Wilderness.  

In 2015 we along with our coalition partners were successful in permanently protecting the Berryessa Snow Mountain region as a National Monument. Considered one of Tuleyome’s most significant accomplishments, the National Monument encompasses over 330,000 acres of federal public lands including the core areas of the Cedar Roughs, Cache Creek and Snow Mountain Wilderness, over 65,000 acres of roadless area, and the critically important connecting migratory corridors that link them together.

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In 2017 the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument was under attack by Donald Trump who, along with his Secretary of the Interior, put 27 monuments up for review, including 8 in California.  Tuleyome responded with its coalition partners to immediately and actively defend the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, and other monuments and their borders from exploitation. Within a month, our combined efforts resulted in over 23,000 public comments being posted to the Secretary of the Interior's website, and over 3000 hardcopy postcards of support and 200 more online postcards of support coming directly through Tuleyome's website.

It is our hope that in the long term the region will become an important ecological addition to the National Conservation Lands.

At Tuleyome, we also believe that everyone deserves access to the outdoors, and our nationally award winning program, Tuleyome Adventures, encourages people of all ages to become more connected to and involved with the natural world that surrounds us.  In 2012 our Tuleyome Adventures program (formerly known as Home Place Adventures) was nationally recognized with it won the National “Kids and Trails Award”, in 2014 we launched our “Nature and You” lecture series in partnership with Yolo County Library to help educate the public about the local natural environment and introduce them to the scientists and businesses working directly in the field.  In  2017 we launched our Certified California Naturalist course, which in partnership with the University of California, allows us to teach and certify members of the public as naturalists in the region.

With our community partners, we continue to expand this program with the publication of educational books for adults and children based on our popular “Tuleyome Tales” newspaper feature articles and the “Species Guide to the Berryessa Snow Mountain Region”. All of the book are available at Lulu.com.

The Tuleyome Adventures program provides not only engaging outdoor experiences and service projects which encourage people of all ages to become leaders in conservation, sustainability and land stewardship.  The program also has opportunities for volunteers to participate in habitat restoration projects, as well as trail building and maintenance and many other forms of community service.

We are also currently in the process of collaborating with Explorit and the city of Woodland to develop a brand new nature and science center on the Woodland Regional Park property. You can read more about that HERE.

Our goal is to inspire members of public to protect, restore, and enjoy the natural landscape in the Berryessa snow Mountain National Monument region.

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Our other successful work in the region includes:

  • Acquiring ecologically key properties at Ireland Ranch, Stebbins Cold Canyon, the Silver Spur Ranch, Goat Mountain and the Berryessa Peak trail easement to help open lands to public use through our land trust component.
  • Building and maintaining trails throughout the region.
  • Eradicating invasive plant species like Arundo and tamarisk weeds with our teams of volunteers.
  • Identifying, protecting, and restoring the watersheds' environmental resources.
  • Developing opportunities for public enjoyment of the watersheds, compatible with resource protection.
  • Developing the systems necessary to remediate mercury mines in the area.

We are also working on purchasing the Huber Ranch, adjacent to the Stebbins Cold Canyon Area, and hope to be able to build trails to the summit of the small mountain on the property.

Where Did the Name Tuleyome Come From?

In a Tuleyome Tale written by Robert Thayer, he explained where the name of our organization originated, writing in part: “Years after beginning my self-directed research into the lands of the creeks, I came across some records of the settlements of the Lake Miwok people, some of whom still inhabit a tine chunk of their original territory. It ran along the Putah Creek drainage between the south end of Clear Lake to the north, what is now Lake Berryessa to the south, the Mayaemas Mountains to the west, and the Blue Ridge to the east. Here in their ancestral lands, places’ names took on dimensions far beyond mere description or labeling. One name jumped off the page into my imagination: Tuleyome. This name referred in the Miwok tongue not only to an ancient village located along Copsey Creek (a small tributary of Cache Creek in the Excelsior Valley), but to the contemporary residents, the ancient ancestors, and the entire surrounding territory inhabited by the Lake Miwok people…”

To Thayer, the name became his mantra, and to him took on a special meaning. It was “that region where the heart has taken root and home territory has sprung forth. Tuleyome, a name marking a place at the head of the watershed, also includes the sound of the word “tule” (an unrelated Spanish name for “bulrush”), which is a characteristic plant of the marshes once home to the River Patwin far downstream, where I now live…”

Tuleyome, protecting and preserving our Deep Home Place.