From June, 2025... #California’s #YurokTribe gets back ancestral lands that were taken over 120 years ago

By Associated Press
PUBLISHED: June 5, 2025 at 9:34 AM PDT

ON THE KLAMATH RIVER, Calif. (AP) — "As a youngster, Barry McCovey Jr. would sneak through metal gates and hide from security guards just to catch a steelhead trout in #BlueCreek amid northwestern California redwoods.

"Since time immemorial, his ancestors from the Yurok Tribe had fished, hunted and gathered in this watershed flanked by coastal forests. But for more than 100 years, these lands were owned and managed by #TimberCompanies, severing the tribe’s access to its homelands.

"When McCovey started working as a fisheries technician, the company would let him go there to do his job.

" 'Snorkeling Blue Creek … I felt the significance of that place to myself and to our people, and I knew then that we had to do whatever we could to try and get that back,' McCovey said.

"After a 23-year effort and $56 million, that became reality.

"Roughly 73 square miles (189 square kilometers) of homelands have been returned to the Yurok, more than doubling the tribe’s land holdings, according to a deal announced Thursday. Completion of the land-back conservation deal along the lower #KlamathRiver — a partnership with #WesternRiversConservancy and other #EnvironmentalGroups — is being called the largest in California history.

"The Yurok Tribe had 90% of its territory taken during the #CaliforniaGoldRush in the mid-1800s, suffering massacres and disease from settlers.

" 'To go from when I was a kid and 20 years ago even, from being afraid to go out there to having it be back in tribal hands … is incredible,' said McCovey, director of the Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department."

Read more / listen:
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/2025/06/05/californias-yurok-tribe-gets-back-ancestral-lands-that-were-taken-over-120-years-ago/

#NativeAmericans #LandBack #YurokNation #IndigenousNews #KlamathRiver #KlamathRiverRestoration #TraditionalFoods #WaterIsLife #IndigenousFoodways #Genocide #SettlerColonialism #AncestralLands

Farmworkers Heal Climate-Scarred Land With #NativeSeeds

At #California’s #HedgerowFarms, specialists produce seeds to #revegetate burned areas, reestablish #wetlands, and transform drought-prone #farmland

By Caleb Hampton

July 7, 2025

"Quiroz and Gómez are seed-cleaning specialists and field workers at Hedgerow Farms, a native seed farm near the #CentralValley town of #WintersCA. Hedgerow’s collectors gather seeds from native plants in the wild, and field workers grow them out at the 300-acre farm to produce more seeds. This spring, neat rows of #mugwort, #PurpleNeedlegrass, and #CaliforniaPoppies sprouted in the midst of neighboring almond orchards, tomatoes, and alfalfa.

"Government agencies, tribes, and other land managers use the seeds to revegetate #FireRavagedAreas, transform #AbandonedFarmland, reestablish wetlands, and repair other damaged or altered lands, creating environments that support local #ecosystems and #biodiversity.

" 'We’re doing something for the planet,' Quiroz said in Spanish.

"Recreational areas have benefited too: Hedgerow Farms’ #SilverbushLupine grows in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and its #NativeGrasses can be found in the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area outside Sacramento. The farm also supplies native seeds to seed packet retailers, helping sow #DroughtResistant plants and establish #pollinator habitat in #urban environments.

"Some projects, such as the ongoing restoration of the #KlamathRiverBasin in Oregon and California, involve billions of seeds — from various suppliers, including Hedgerow — spread across thousands of acres. 'Native vegetation is the foundation of a healthy #ecosystem,' the #YurokTribe said in a social media post showing #wildflowers blooming this spring in the scar of a former reservoir.

"After four dams were removed from the #KlamathRiver, the tribe began #revegetating the riverbanks last year, planting species such as #milkweed — a key food source for #MonarchButterflies — that once flourished in the watershed."

Read more:
https://civileats.com/2025/07/07/farmworkers-heal-climate-scarred-land-with-native-seeds/

#SolarPunkSunday #FoodSecurity #RegenerativeAgriculture #Restoration #GardeningForPollinators #RestorativeAgriculture

HT @Yehuda

[This is significant. Ok next!]

"The 73 square miles of forested land is over three times the size of Manhattan, according to Nelson Mathews, president of the Western Rivers Conservancy. The conservancy partnered with the Yurok Tribe for 23 years to return the massive parcel of stolen land, which is now called the Blue Creek Salmon Sanctuary and Yurok Tribal Community Forest and is fully owned and managed by the tribe."

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/parcel-size-manhattan-returned-california-tribe-20363588.php

#LandBack #Native #Indigenous #Yurok #YurokTribe #BlueCreekSalmonSanctuary #NoMoreStolenLand

🌿 The Yurok Tribe has received $18M to restore the Klamath River ecosystem! Their revegetation efforts are in full swing, hand-sowing native plants and helping salmon return to the Upper Klamath Basin for the first time in over 100 years. The project aims to create 150 acres of fish and wildlife habitat.

@goodnews

#GoodNews #KlamathRiver #EnvironmentalRestoration #YurokTribe #SalmonRestoration #TribalLeadership
https://nativenewsonline.net/environment/yurok-tribe-receives-18m-for-restoration-resumes-revegetation-work-on-undammed-klamath-river

'Anything that can be built can be taken down': The largest dam removal in US history is complete – what happens next?

The #KlamathRiver is free of four huge dams for the first time in generations. But for the #Yurok tribe, the river's restoration is only just beginning – starting with 18 billion seeds.

by Lucy Sheriff, September 3, 2024

"This is decades and decades in the making," says Thompson. 'We were told it was never going to happen. That it was foolish to even ask for one removal. We were asking for four.'

"The #KlamathBasin covers more than 12,000 square miles (31,000 sq km) in southern Oregon and northern California, and was home to the JC Boyle, Copco 1, Copco 2 and Iron Gate dams, all owned by #PacifiCorp, an electric utilities company. The Klamath was once the third-largest salmon producing river on the US's West Coast before the construction of the dams blocked fish from accessing almost 400 miles (640km) of critical river habitat for almost 100 years.

"Fall #ChinookSalmon numbers plummeted by more than 90% and spring chinook by 98%. #SteelheadTrout, #CohoSalmon and #PacificLamprey numbers also saw drastic declines, and the Klamath tribes in the upper basin have been without their salmon fishery for a century, since the completion of #Copco 1 in 1922. The situation became so bad that Yurok tribe – who are known as the salmon people – began importing Alaskan salmon for their annual salmon festival, traditionally held to celebrate the first return of fall chinook salmon to the Klamath River.

"The dams also had a severe impact on #WaterTemperature and quality – growth of #ToxicAlgae behind two of the dams resulted in health warnings against water contact.

"'It was painful,' says Willard Carlson, a Yurok elder who is known as a #RiverWarrior and was part of the inter-generational campaign. 'All those years seeing our river damaged like that. I remember as a kid we'd have other people from nearby tribes making fun of our river. 'Oh, you're Yurok, your river is dirty.' For us, the #dams were a monument to the [#coloniser] people who conquered us."

[...]

"Restoring the land

But something that does need "a helping hand is the restoration of 2,200 acres (890ha) of land that is above ground for the first time in a century following the emptying of four reservoirs.

"'Removing the dams is one thing, restoring the land is quite another,' says Thompson, a civil engineer and part of the crew working on the restoration project – which is being managed by Resource Environmental Solutions, an ecological restoration company."

Read more:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240903-removing-the-klamath-river-dams-to-restore-the-river-what-happens-next

#KarukTribe #YurokTribe #KlamathRiverRenewal #RestoreNature #Decolonize #WaterIsLife #NativeAmericans

NEW PODCAST EPISODE

Mad River Brewing is 100% owned by the Yurok Tribe of North California. It's one of (maybe the only) tribally-owned brewery in the US.

CEO Linda Cooley had a chat with me about the history of the brewery, the achievements, and her aims for the brewery.

On YouTube, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Just search for BeoirFest

#beer #craftbeer #brewing #yurok #yuroktribe #native

https://youtu.be/rFJfe9Gv3Ag