Oregon State University plans to team with five Oregon tribes on a three-year, $5 million forest restoration effort to improve the resilience of woodlands to climate change using Native American practices.
The U.S. Department of the Interior is funding the $5 million pilot project, which will include collecting the seeds of culturally and ecologically significant plants on Bureau of Land Management lands.
Potential tribal partners include the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians, the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz, the Coquille Indian Tribe and the Cow Creek Band of the Umpqua Indians.
“We will engage each of these tribal nations individually, co-creating partnerships that best reflect their unique community needs,” said Cristina Eisenberg, the College of Forestry’s associate dean for inclusive excellence and director of tribal initiatives. “The BLM is giving us the flexibility to adapt our project to best meet the needs of our partners.”
The process uses “traditional ecological knowledge,” said Eisenberg, which is the accumulation of information, practices and beliefs about relationships and environmental functions, including all elements, species and processes within ecosystems.
“We want to engage and empower tribal youth to help find solutions to the pressing conservation problems we are facing in Oregon and beyond,” Eisenberg said. “A goal is to provide as many job and educational opportunities as possible for tribal youth within the college. We also hope to foster a tribal seed-growing business, to build on work that has already done by some Tribal nations, and we will co-create an eco-cultural restoration plan for federal land.”