Celebrating Collaborative Ecocultural Restoration in Fall River Mills

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Published July 15, 2022

This week Lomakatsi and partners celebrated the completion of the Fall River Lake Trail Improvement and Ecocultural Restoration Project with a ribbon cutting ceremony at the trail’s entrance. Located adjacent to Fall River Mills in Shasta County, California, the project launched in 2019 as a collaboration between the Ajumawi Band (Ah-joom-ah-wee) of the Ajumawi-Atsuge Nation (Pit River Tribe), Lomakatsi, Inter-Tribal Ecosystem Restoration Partnership, Fall River Valley CSD, Stewardship Council, Shasta Land Trust, and PG&E with support from community partners including the Rotary Club of Burney-Fall River and Spring Rivers Foundation Outdoor Education.

Partners, community members, and trail users gathered to commemorate the rehabilitation of over 2 miles of public trail adjacent to Fall River Lake, which included the planting of approximately 1,000 native plants with cultural and subsistence uses for local tribes. Crews also decommissioned illegal off highway vehicle trails that were degrading grassland habitat and threatening an influx of invasive species. The work was led and completed by Ajumawi Band members and an inter-tribal workforce through Lomakatsi. Interpretive signage highlighting native plants was developed and installed at the trailhead and along the trail, highlighting the cultural value of seven different species including Tule, Gray Pine, Western Juniper, and Blue Elderberry.

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This work complements 20 acres of oak woodland restoration, including ecological thinning and prescribed pile burning, completed in the first phase of the project beginning in 2019, on the west side of Fall River Lake. This effort, completed by local Ajumawi Band members, Issi Wah Ecocultural Restoration Services, and Lomakatsi crew members, enhanced important cultural oak habitat and reduced the risk of wildfire to the community of Fall River Mills.

Lomakatsi is grateful for the opportunity to assist and learn from the Ajumawi Band in stewarding their ancestral lands, for all the amazing partners who came together to make the project possible, and for the community supporting the evolution of this unique educational and recreational site.

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645 Washington Street
Ashland, Oregon 97520

(541) 488-0208
info@lomakatsi.org

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Mission

Restore ecosystems and the sustainability of communities, cultures, and economies.

We acknowledge that Lomakatsi operates programs across the ancestral lands of aboriginal peoples who lived and live in the watersheds of the Willamette River, Rogue River, Klamath River, Umpqua River, and Pit River, in what is now called Oregon and California. From sagebrush hillsides and mixed conifer forests, to oak woodlands and riverine systems, we offer our respect, recognition, and gratitude to the original past, present, and future inhabitants of these landscapes, to whom we dedicate this work.