USDA Under Secretary Visits Ashland and Lomakatsi Tribal Crew

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Published March 22, 2023

Lomakatsi was honored to join US Forest Service regional and local leadership, along with other partners, to welcome U.S. Department of Agriculture Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment Dr. Homer Wilkes and USFS Deputy Chief of State, Private and Tribal Forestry Jaelith Hall-Rivera, who traveled from Washington DC to the Rogue Valley to announce new Community Wildfire Defense Fund Grant funding for the state of Oregon yesterday. The awards included $249,700 for City of Ashland Oregon to rewrite their Community Wildfire Protection Plan.

U.S. Forest Service- Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest Supervisor Merv George facilitated a roundtable discussion at Southern Oregon University that included USFS Pacific Northwest Deputy Regional Forester Robert Sanchez and Ashland Mayor Tonya Graham. Lomakatsi Tribal Partnerships Director Belinda Brown delivered the land acknowledgement. Our Executive Director Marko Bey and colleagues from The Ashland Forest Resiliency Stewardship Project and Rogue Forest Partners shared strategies to increase the pace and scale of forest restoration and community wildfire protection.

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In the afternoon the Under Secretary and partners had a field visit with inter-tribal crew members from Lomakatsi’s Tribal Youth Ecological Forestry Training Program, funded by Oregon Youth Works/Oregon Conservation Corps. The Under Secretary shared words of inspiration, and asked the crew about their experiences earning professional certifications and working on landscape-scale forest restoration initiatives. We’re grateful to USDA leadership for their visit and to all our partners for working together to heal ecosystems and make our communities more resilient.

Check out these awesome photos from the day taken by USFS staff!

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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.