Lomakatsi, SREP join USFS for restoration
From our weekly issue dated November 26, 2008
A 10-year, 10,000-acre Master Stewardship Agreement with Takilma-based Siskiyou Regional Education Project (SREP), and Lomakatsi Restoration Project, of Ashland, was announced by the U.S. Forest Service’s Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest Friday, Nov. 21.
“The strategic agreement creates an opportunity for Wild Rivers Ranger District personnel and the two partners to collaborate with communities to develop projects that benefit from cooperative cost-share efforts,” said Lomakatsi. “The Wild Rivers Ranger District has approximately 10,000 acres that can be treated in a forest restoration strategy.
The district overall contains around 500,000 acres.
“Partners will work closely with the local stakeholders to restore forest stands that pose potential wildfire risks to communities and ecosystem values.
“The agreement requires partners to engage in collaboration to influence the development and implementation of projects that improve, maintain, or restore forest health; restore or maintain water quality. Also, those that improve fish and wildlife habitat and includes opportunities to re-establish native plant species and increase forest resilience to climate change, insects and disease.”
Additional goals will include increasing the local workforce and contractor involvement through employment opportunities and workforce training programs and building capacity for the emerging forest restoration economy in Southern Oregon. The agreement also focuses on an educational component regarding natural resource management for local communities and future generations.
“This is an incremental step forward building even better local communities and our forest,” said District Ranger Joel King, of Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, Wild Rivers District.
“The agreement,” he added, “demonstrates a spirit of cooperation and partnership with two local organizations, and encourages a variety of management objectives for cooperative conservation on federal land,” he said.
“It creates additional opportunities,” said King, “to build on our relationship where we have been active in community-supported stewardship and restoration forestry practices on these landscapes in the past.”
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Stated Oshana Catranides, Siskiyou Project’s Community Forestry & Restoration program director, “We look forward to working with diverse interests to solve common problems. We are excited for the opportunity that this agreement provides for community involvement in ecological restoration of our forest in the Wild Rivers area.”
And noted Marko Bey, director of Lomakatsi, “This agreement opens an incredible opportunity for building a community-based restoration forestry model in the Wild Rivers Ranger District.
“Projects under this agreement will work to restore forest resiliency and diversity, while creating employment opportunities for the emerging restoration economy developing here in Southern Oregon,” Bey concluded.
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