New SYRCL director aims to save state parks

Caleb Dardick

In keeping with the organization’s activist roots, SYRCL is juggling a community-wide petition drive to save local state parks like Malakoff Diggins and Bridgeport from closing.

“We are hopeful everyone who comes to the festival this year will write a letter to the governor,” said SYRCL Executive Director, Caleb Dardick, who added that saving the parks will be a focal point of this year’s festival.

A three-minute teaser for a film in progress called, “The First 70,” a 75-minute documentary called “California Forever” and a workshop will address the proposed closures.

In December, more than 400 community members crowded the Miner’s Foundry during a town hall meeting meant to find solutions to state budget cuts that threaten 70 state parks, including Malakoff and South Yuba.

Just a few weeks into a month-long petition drive meant to drum up 5,000 signatures, the goal had nearly been reached, Dardick said.

Not surprising for a community organization where activism has run like the lifeblood since its founding in 1983 when dams threatened what is now a Wild and Scenic stretch of the river. In coming years, the group hopes to restore populations of wild salmon to native spawning grounds in the upper watershed.

Raised on the San Juan Ridge, Dardick returned to Nevada County in September to head up SYRCL after living in the Bay Area since 1984 working in public relation consultant circles for government, business and nonprofit clients.

His father, former Nevada County supervisor and disability rights activist Sam Dardick, passed away last year. A River Guardian plaque SYRCL gave to his father in 1999 proudly hangs from Caleb’s office wall.

Volunteerism powers much of what SYRCL does, including its film festival where 600 volunteers worked last year. Throughout the year, SYRCL members contribute with river clean ups and river monitoring projects representing a broad spectrum of the community from retired professionals and housewives, doctors and scientists to poets and artists.

“It’s that diversity of participation that I find so powerful,” Dardick said.