Yana Valachovic (E-mail), provides an educational, research and technical assistance program to Humboldt and Del Norte County landowners and resource professionals. Her program emphasis is on forest management activities including watershed management, conservation biology, water quality and silviculture. She provides field reviews, technical workshops (e.g. tree planting, growth and yield modeling, restoration, fire and fuels management, etc) and conducts forest management research projects. She is currently developing a research program in the fields of watershed and forest management working on assessing the quantity and value of large wood debris retention in Douglas-fir and redwood forests. Over the past year she has been active in Sudden Oak Death issues, the Buckeye Conservancy Forest Project, the Board of Forestry Stewardship Committee, the Forestry Institute for Teachers and other County Programs. She joined Cooperative Extension as the Forest Advisor in November 2000. To learn more about other forestry extension programs throughout the State look to (University of California Cooperative Extension Forestry)

Background Yana is a registered professional forester in the State of California (#2740) and a native to Humboldt County. She attained her master's degree from Oregon State University in Corvallis, OR and her bachelor's degree from Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. She worked as a Faculty Research Assistant for Oregon State University's Department of Forest Science and has been a consulting botanist and mycologist to the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. She has experience with non-timber forest products, such as morel and matsutake mushrooms, and has conducted research and taught workshops on the subjects. Prior to joining Cooperative Extension she was the Certification Director for the Institute for Sustainable Forestry. While at the Institute she was responsible for the SmartWood certification efforts in California and was also involved with industrial and non-industrial landowner outreach and technical assistance. Yana has been involved locally with watershed assessments and sediment reduction measures. As a local landowner, she understands what it means to address these concerns.