For the tribe, #redwoods are considered living beings and traditionally only fallen trees have been used to build their homes and canoes.
“As the original #stewards of this land, we look forward to working together with the Redwood National and State Parks to manage it,” Clayburn said. “This is work that we’ve always done, and continued to fight for, but I feel like the rest of world is catching up right now and starting to see that Native people know how to manage this land the best.”
5/13
The property is at the heart of the tribe’s #AncestralLand and was taken in the 1800s to #exploit its old-growth redwoods and other natural resources, the tribe said. Save the Redwoods League bought the property in 2013 and began working with the tribe and others to restore it.
Much of the property was paved over by a lumber operation that worked there for 50 years and also buried #PrairieCreek, where #salmon would swim upstream from the #Pacific to spawn.
6/13
A growing #LandBack movement has been returning Indigenous homelands to the #descendants of those who lived there for millennia before European settlers arrived. That has seen #NativeAmerican tribes taking a greater role in #restoring rivers and lands to how they were before they were expropriated.
Last week, a 2.2-acre parking lot was returned to the #Ohlone people where they established the first human settlement beside #SanFranciscoBay 5,700 years ago.
7/13
https://apnews.com/article/berkeley-tribal-land-returned-b310527bcaba81fcbbc9fd9f6ff0af93
Ohlone people and others are rejoicing over the return of sacred Native land dating back thousands of years. They said at a news conference in Berkeley, California, on Wednesday that the move rights a historic wrong. The 2.2-acre parking lot is the only undeveloped portion of the shellmound in West Berkeley. This is where ancestors of today’s Ohlone people established the first human settlement on the shores of the San Francisco Bay 5,700 years ago. Berkeley's City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to give title of the land to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust. The trust plans to plant Native medicine and food.
In 2022, more than 500 acres of redwood forest on the #LostCoast were returned the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council, a group of 10 tribes.
The ’O Rew property represents just a tiny fraction of the more than 500,000 acres of the ancestral land of the Yurok, whose reservation straddles the lower 44 miles of the #KlamathRiver.
8/13
A conservation group is turning over a historic redwood grove on the Northern California coast to descendants of the original Native American inhabitants. Save the Redwoods League said it would transfer to the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council a 523-acre property it recently acquired on the Lost Coast. It's the second property the league has transferred to the group of 10 tribes. The property includes prized old-growth redwoods, which were mostly decimated by logging. The land was purchased with $3.5 million from Pacific Gas & Electric Co. for northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet habitat to mitigate other environmental damage by the utility.
The #Yurok tribe is also helping lead efforts in the largest #DamRemoval project in U.S. history along the #California - #Oregon border to restore the #Klamath and boost the #salmon population.
Plans for ‘O Rew include a traditional Yurok village of redwood plank houses and a #SweatHouse. There also will be a new visitor and cultural center displaying scores of #SacredArtefacts from deerskins to baskets
9/13
U.S. regulators approved a plan to demolish four dams on a California river and open up hundreds of miles of salmon habitat that would be the largest dam removal and river restoration project in the world when it goes forward. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission vote Thursday on the lower Klamath River dams is the last major regulatory hurdle and the biggest milestone for a $500 million demolition proposal championed by Native American tribes and environmentalists for years. The project would return the lower half of California’s second-largest river to a free-flowing state for the first time in more than a century.
that have been returned to the tribe from university and museum collections, Clayburn said.
The center, which will include information on the redwoods and #ForestRestoration, also will serve as a hub for the tribe to carry out their #traditions, she said.
It will add more than a mile of new trails, including a new segment of the #CaliforniaCoastalTrail, with interpretive exhibits.
10/13
The trails will connect to many of the existing trails inside the parks, including to popular old-growth redwood groves.
The #tribe had already been restoring #SalmonHabitat for three years on the property, building a meandering stream channel, two connected ponds and about 20 acres of #floodplain while dismantling a defunct mill site. Crews also planted more than 50,000 #NativePlants, including grass-like slough sedge, black cottonwood and coast redwood trees.
11/13
#Salmon were once abundant in #rivers and #streams running through these redwood forests, But #dams, #logging, #development and #drought — due in part to climate change — have destroyed the waterways and threatened many of these #species. Last year recreational and commercial king salmon fishing seasons were closed along much of the West Coast due to near-record low numbers of the iconic fish returning to their spawning grounds.
12/13
https://apnews.com/article/salmon-fishing-ban-chinook-west-coast-fd818fb1489834d5f8f9371818178b11
California officials say they want federal disaster relief for the state’s salmon fishing industry after the 2023 fishing season for fall-run chinook or king salmon was closed for much of the West Coast. The efforts announced Friday come a day after the Pacific Fishery Management Council unanimously approved the closure of the 2023 season for all commercial and most recreational fishing of the fish along the coast from Cape Falcon in northern Oregon to the California-Mexico border. Biologists say the chinook salmon population has declined dramatically after years of drought. Some hope unusually wet weather will bring relief with rivers rising, but too much could wash away salmon eggs.
Thousands of juvenile coho and chinook #salmon and #steelhead have already returned to #PrairieCreek along with red-legged #frogs, northwestern #salamanders, #waterfowl and other species.
Redwoods National Park Superintendent Steve Mietz praised the #restoration of the area and its return to the #tribe, saying it is “healing the land while healing the relationships among all the people who inhabit this magnificent #forest.”
13/13
anna_lillith 🇺🇦🌱🐖