EcoRing rallies behind Russian River Watershed

<p>In many ways, Toni Tacoma is a professional cheerleader. No, she doesn’t wave pompoms or implore sports teams to be aggressive. Instead, she serves a more important cause: to raise awareness about eco-tourism in the lower part of the Russian River Valley.</p><p>Tacoma is the executive director of EcoRing, a Monte Rio-based nonprofit group charged with marketing the lower Russian River as an eco-tourism destination.</p><p>EcoRing facilitates the development of eco-friendly tours, events, lodging, dining and farm products for the Russian River area while providing education and advice to businesses, residents and visitors.</p><p>“The goal is to lead through education and example,” Tacoma said. “We see it as our role to explain that to business owners, and get visitors excited about patronizing those businesses that are making an effort to something good.”</p><p>Tacoma, a San Diego native and former president of the Russian River Chamber of Commerce, has been involved with EcoRing on a volunteer basis from the very beginning.</p><p>She and a handful of community activists founded the organization in 2006 after funding became available through the Russian River Redevelopment and Oversight Committee, a branch of the county Community Development Commission.</p><p>Founding members were worried that developers eventually might build large hotels along the river banks and wanted to take a stand in keeping the community small. As part of the plan, they banded together to help local businesses become more green by using less and conserving more.</p><p>Today, the formal “greening” process begins with paperwork forms from the county that help business owners from Guerneville to Bodega Bay evaluate the eco-friendliness of their businesses. EcoRing collects these forms and redirects them to auditing agencies, which confirm that applicants are indeed green.</p><p>Since the process began toward the end of 2006, EcoRing has “greened” more than 30 businesses in a variety of categories across the region — adventure outfitters, restaurants, spas.</p><p>All of the businesses are listed in an online directory at www.ecoring.org.</p><p>Robin McKee-Cant, meeting sales and services manager for the Sonoma County Tourism Bureau, said EcoRing has acted as a “marketing consortium” for the region, spreading the word about environment-friendly businesses in the area.</p><p>“Until they interact with EcoRing, many people have no idea what kinds of eco-adventures our part of Wine Country has to offer,” McKee-Cant said.</p><p>Perhaps the only criticism of EcoRing’s work is that the geographic focus of the Lower Russian River is too narrow. As the group’s name implies, Tacoma and her colleagues envisioned EcoRing eventually linking up with similar eco-tourism groups in other areas around Northern California. So far, however, this regional network has not materialized.</p><p>Especially in the current economic climate, money has been hard to come by. Tacoma said the group recently launched a new fund-raising effort and currently is weighing the benefits of selling carbon offsets as a way to raise some cash.</p><p>“It’s important to raise awareness among tourists and members of the local community,” said Tacoma. “We’ve come pretty far in two years, but we’ve got a long way to go.”</p>