WKRP 2022 Annual Report

ESTERN KLAMATH RESTORATION PARTNERSHIP

Group picture of the 2022 Klamath TREX participants by Michael Max Hentz

Special dedication this year to the Klamath Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (KTREX) program

"The Mid Klamath River Basin is a vast area rich with ancestral tribal history, fire and water, that draws you in. I can't think of a better place to have hosted the first Karuk Indigenous Women in Fire Training Exchange as well as to affirm wonderful contemporary and historical work that has been taking place for many years with Klamath TREX. The local people who plan and provide leadership for KTREX are now world renowned. Quite an accomplishment and one that should be widely celebrated.

As I began my own month-long journey in the fall of 2022, getting to know this landscape and the many people who call this place home, I too began to feel a sense of place and belonging. I felt myself experiencing the awakening of a deep, dormant spirit which swayed me into the world of cultural and sovereign use of fire. Even after a lifetime in fire management, I was exceptionally grateful for this new offering of knowledge about indigenous fire but also melancholy about what I missed in my own fire career. This KTREX event allowed me to make up for some lost time. The profound local generosity afforded me a place of vulnerability to have my own insecure mind open to the richness of indigenous fire knowledge and practice. I will be forever grateful for these gifts.

Fire has and always will be a catalyst for transformation; be it in our homelands or in our hearts. We can choose both."

Kelly Martin,

"I have hosted Women-in-Fire TREX (WTREX) events all over the country, but the Karuk WTREX was the first ever to center on Indigenous women and cultural objectives. To say the KWTREX was a successful event would be an understatement; we had a beautiful burn window, incredible participants from all over the country and the world, and we were warmly welcomed by the Tribe and the community. As with most WTREX events, people went home with new skills, new connections, and a deeper sense of self and place. For me personally, the event was powerful and moving, but it was also existential and raw, forcing us to contend with and work on our relationships with fire, with the land, and with each other. The event felt like the beginning of something much bigger, and I look forward to supporting whatever the future brings."

Lenya Quinn Davidson, Area Fire Advisor, WTREX Co-lead

"We heard incredible presentations, stories and songs from leaders in the indigenous fire movement, from prescribed fire leaders from CALFIRE, and local and national NGO's. We stayed up late under the stars around the fire playing music, telling stories, and building a new culture of good fire practitioners that, despite all odds, will deliver fire to their home places, from California to Canada, Costa Rica and Spain!"

Will Harling, WKRP Co-lead, KTREX Co-lead

2022 KTREX Incident Commander

Above: participants at Karuk Women's TREX (KWTREX). Below, left: professionals and women in fire representing Australia, participants of KWTREX

KLAMATH TREX & KARUK WOMEN'S TREX

2022 was an exceptional year for the TREX program in the Western Klamath Region. The first of its kind, Indigenous women-led TREX was hosted by Karuk women leaders with some assistance from KTREX organizers Between the two events, there were over 180 participants from nine countries, 12 states, and 95 local, tribal, state, federal, private, and academic organizations, all with diverse backgrounds in fire and other related disciplines. KTREX has always been and will continue to be a key program of WKRP's as it brings all partners together and works towards collective strategies such as: increasing the use of fire through the pre-colonial lens; increasing local restoration capacity; accelerating development of fire-adapted communities; and engagement of intergenerational education and learning. However, KTREX is just one avenue we are employing these strategies. More examples are demonstrated in the following pages.

FROM 2022 KTREX PARTICIPANTS

"It's a training program that is paving the way for something bigger, something that will allow us to help get our forests healthy again"

"A lot of knowledgeable people from all parts of the world"

"This is the center of the good fire movement"

"People with so much passion for what they do"

"It was nice to learn from such a diverse group of knowledgeable people It's beautiful"

"It was the most helpful training of my career"

"Klamath TREX is an incredibly unique opportunity to learn about cultural burning, to burn in diverse habitats in a challenging environment, and to network with local, tribal, state, federal and international fire-Lighters"

"[Most valued] learning from people more experienced in all specific aspects of fire than I am having a setting where questions and learning are expected rather than looked down upon"

"Pioneering collaboration to rebuild our relationship with natural fire process and respecting indigenous cultural practices"

"They have created a grassroots movement around prescribed fire with an indigenous focus"

"It is so powerful to see people from so many backgrounds come together to work in fire"

"It's a critical event for increasing pace & scale, working toward tribal food sovereignty, land stewardship and prescribed burning workforce development in the western U.S. and beyond. It should be funded lavishly, forever"

KARUK WOMEN'S TREX

The Karuk Women's TREX was organized and lead by Karuk women for local, national, and international Indigenous people with assistance from WKRP partners / KTREX prog resenting 43 separate Indigenous groups from thre -led Prescribed Fire Training Exchange providin with one another!

"Traditional indigenous knowledge is an invaluable resource that will help our entire world address the climate crisis. Knowledge about the regenerative power of fire...is wisdom that has been refined over thousands of years. We put a fancy name on it now, "prescribed fire", but it's based on a simple concept that indigenous people have known and practiced for generations...fire can be a force for good when it is respected and controlled"

of the Interior

Goals of KWTREX were to promote intergenerational learning and burning for all ages, learn and support basketweavers within our communities, center Indigenous women and families in burning practices, and create a safe space for Indigenous women in fire. Major takeaways from the event included the need to further promote spaces for Indigenous women in fire as well as Indigenous trans, non-binary, and LGBTQ+

“Indigenous knowledge [in many ways], is the longest body of knowledge here on this land, it’s been proven over time to work here. It’s an old science.”

Find

KWTREX on social media

Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo Tribe member Secretary

Vikki Preston, Karuk Tribe Dept. of Natural Resources

Neva Gibbens, Analisa Tripp, Aja Conrad, Vikki Preston Karuk Indigenous Womens TREX Organizers

WILDFIRES AND THE NATIONAL PRESCRIBED FIRE PAUSE

The 2022 fire season was an active and devastating one early on for some in the Klamath region The most impactful fires and their extent are shown in the maps below and included the McKinney (60,138 acres), Yeti (7,886 acres, left of McKinney), and Lightning Complex (29,815 acres). Others fires included the Mill (3,935 acres) and Mountain (11,690 acres); with at least 17 and 3 homes burning in each, respectively. The McKinney Fire caused the most damage to human lives and livelihoods with four lives and 87 homes lost. The image directly below was produced by Basho Watson Parks and posted on the Salmon River and Orleans Complexities Facebook page conveys the striking reality of how much significant fire the region has had over the last three consecutive seasons, including 2022.

The National Prescribed Fire Pause

In August, the U.S. Forest Service's 90-day prescribed fire pause ended just weeks before the Karuk WTREX start date Significant trust between landowners, tribal partners, CAL FIRE and other partners once again provided an opportunity to conduct controlled burns on private and tribal fee lands for both WTREX and KTREX. Local Six Rivers NF fire managers worked through the seven additional procedural requirements once the pause was lifted on the federal/public lands side, but were not able to get approvals in time for WTREX and KTREX. The Six Rivers NF was the first Forest to conduct a prescribed burn after the pause in Region 5, however these new requirements place additional work burdens on our FS partners at a time when we need to be decreasing these regulatory hurdles and getting to scale WKRP partners will continue to work closely with our FS partners to increase the scope and scale of prescribed burning despite the additional procedural steps to burning on public lands.

STRATEGIC LANDSCAPE FUELS REDUCTION

Adding to the great work done through KTREX this year, WKRP partners made significant strides in fuels reductions through implementation of projects and engagement of the AHAL (All Hands, All Lands) burn team model This WKRP strategy (entitled above), links together all WKRP strategies (there are nine total) Another strategy - developing inclusive partnerships to implement zones of agreement, is depicted well in the restoration and planning discussed here.

Due to a track record of success and trusting relationships, the start of July had WKRP partners again engaging the local AHAL burn team to take advantage of the seasonal burn window. A total of 215 acres of broadcast burning was completed with dozens of training opportunities, including federal "burn boss" (RxB2) and California state certified burn boss (CARX) trainees.

Morgan Point by Eric Darragh, Mid Klamath Watershed Council Fire and Forestry Director, December, 2022

In 2022, WKRP partners submitted a proposal to state Board of Forestry to tier 31,000 acres of fuels treatments to the CA Vegetation Treatment Program (VTP) Environmental Impact Report (EIR) via a Project Specific Addendum (PSA). This PSA will essentially provide CEQA coverage for all private lands within the entire WKRP planning area and significantly streamline the process!

The Somes Project (Somes Bar Integrated Management Project), WKRP’s first landscape scale project, is now in it's fourth season of implementation. Approximately 232 acres of manual thinning; and 229 acres of mechanical thinning were completed in 2022. Through KTREX, partners conducted broadcast burns on 233 acres; while a backlog of over 425 acres of hazardous piles were addressed with help from the Six Rivers National Forest (SRNF). Between the Somes Project and KTREX, where we accomplish the lion's share of our collaborative work, we completed over 1,065 acres of restoration and fuels reduction. The Somes Project was designed around four distinct focal areas demonstrating collective agreement among partners including the strategic approach to treat high priority, dangerous fuels in densely populated areas, and to restore diverse wildlife habitats, plant communities, and fire’s ecological role. We’re beginning to wrap up all first-entry (of a multi-phased approach) manual thinning treatments (5,390 acres) including burning piles (1,357 acres). This means we are close to having significant acreage ready for reentry of restorative prescribed fire. Some of these fire-prone areas have not experienced fire for over 100 years; we are racing against time to treat these areas before wildfires return to them We are looking forward to working with our USFS partners to problem-solve around scaling-up controlled-burning acreage treatments on national forest system lands.

Other strategic activities include the 10-year WKRP Plan Renewal and the Orleans-Somes Bar (OSB) Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) update. Both of these plans will inform one another and project priorities over the next decade and will focus on addressing acute as well as broad threats to our landscape from extreme wildfire. Some of these include safeguarding homes and properties; renewing strategies by re-looking at past agreements; evaluating actions; and integrating lessons and new understandings to achieving our mission of creating community and forest resiliency to wildland fire.

2022 also marked the initiation of the SRNF Fire and Fuels Environmental Assessment (EA). WKRP's Core Team is thrilled at the potential this EA could hold with scaling up critically-needed prescribed fire.

FISHERIES, FOOD SECURITY, AND SUSTAINABLE DIVERSE REVENUE STREAMS

In 2022, WKRP joined the federal CFLRP cohort (Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program) comprised of 15 partnerships across the country. This marked a significant advance in our strategy of creating sustainable, diverse revenue streams towards socioecological goals of resiliency, by providing significant implementation funding for a 10-year period. Closely linked is how this advance is aiding another strategy - integrating food security into forest management actions, by uniquely supporting instream and upslope restoration, together. As fisheries work continually strives toward building healthy anadromous fish populations, we are meeting this strategy upslope through the Ikxariyatuuyship (“Spirit Mountain”; IKX) Project (in the planning phase). The culturally significant IKX project, is being undertaken by the Forest Service in close coordination with the Karuk Tribe and WKRP partners to prepare the ancestral landscape to promote cultural focal species, human gathering activities, spiritual practices and place-based, social-ecological relationships reliant upon continual interaction with a healthy ecosystem. A healthy ecosystem here supports Karuk cultural values and human communities as part of the natural setting; experiences fire at relatively self-limiting scales; and promotes biodiversity and socio-ecological resiliency.

During the 2022 field season, SRRC, Karuk, and MKWC crews visited and assessed 62 tributaries identified for fish passage improvement, of these, 44 tributaries were treated for barrier removal and/or fish passage improvement Each site was identified based on recovery actions outlined in the Mid Klamath Subbasin Plan and Recovery Strategy for California Coho Salmon (CDFW, 2004) In total, 63 barriers or impediments to passage were remediated, making 81 4 miles of stream accessible to juvenile and adult salmonids

*Dam removal update!* In November, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) unanimously approved the surrender of the Lower Klamath Project License and the decommissioning of its four hydroelectric dams. The license surrender order is the final decision by FERC and the action that allows the Klamath River Renewal Corporation (KRRC) to remove the dams and implement restoration activities. KRRC plans to begin dam removal activities in 2023 with completion marked for January 2024.

Draft Ikxariyatuuyship Project Map

PRESS AND PUBLICATIONS

Video clips featuring partners and our programs

Below: Wade Crowfoot, California Natural Resources Secretary and Chief of CAL FIRE, Joe Tyler talk about proactive fire preparedness that affected the McKinney Fire behavior (e.g. 4:02), and KTREX is highlighted as a primary "all-hands" demonstration in the state (e.g. 7:15).

Articles and more featuring WKRP partner programs

White House Indigenous Knowledge Guidance for Federal Agencies

Frank K. Lake (PSW Research Ecologist/Tribal liaison; WKRP Core Team) was asked to review the guidance, and was invited to submit a case study on his work and experiences with Tribes, Tribal entities, and other partners. He focused on WKRP / Karuk Tribe for his case study. [12.2022; pgs 26, 27]

"Indigenous knowledge guides the conservation of culturally important plants"

Features research partnership between the Karuk Tribe/UC Berkeley on how fire suppression and drought impact four plants central to food security and culture. [Mongabay, 12.2022]

"Tribe and partners light up a forest to restore landscape in California"

Features the Somes Integrated Fire Management Project and it's integration of the role of cultural burning. [Mongabay, 11.2022]

Jefferson Public Radio interview with Will Harling, September, 2022

Need for shift in language & culture of the Forest Service that continues to elevate fire exclusion at the expense of proactive prevention measures and lifting up tribal fire practitioners.

WKRP Speaker and Joint Lecture Series' Recordings

June 16

- Agroforestry and Wildlife Programs in the Klamath

June 29 - Transforming Restoration Science and the Cal Poly SAFE Program

December 2 - Joint Lecture Series with the Karuk Tribe Department of Natural Resources Pikyav Field Institute - Socioecological and Ecocultural discourses

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, and member of the Laguna Pueblo Tribe, honors the Karuk WTREX with this acknowledgement.

At the tail end of the understory burning period of the 2022 Klamath TREX, Michael Max Hentz shot this drone footage of the "Watson" burn unit. Check out this gorgeous footage!

THE YEAR AHEAD

Looking ahead to 2023, we reference the trajectory that 2022 set us upon Partners are aligning around longterm, strategic planning and implementation that benefit and mutually support one another. As briefly mentioned in preceding pages, the Partnership is engaging three 10-year planning processes simultaneously that include engagement of the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP), renewal of WKRP's Restoration Plan, and updating the Orleans-Somes Bar Community Wildfire Protection Plan. Partners will work to not only align these three together but tie in other local (e g Karuk Tribe Climate Adaptation Plan, Karuk Tribe Climate Vulnerability Assessment), state (e.g. California Strategic Plan for Expanding the Use of Beneficial Fire), and federal initiatives (e.g. Tribal Forest Protection Act; Bipartisan Infrastructure Law; Inflation Reduction Act) for a systematic, cohesive path forward

Timing is an interesting thing, it was around last May when the group received word of joining CFLRP, however the two other 10-year strategic plan processes had already begun. We couldn’t have planned it better, despite the tall order, these efforts will all work to maximize ecosystem prioritization for a clear path forward on how to deal with the biggest challenges we face including fire behavior and climate change impacts that are exacerbating an already difficult land management paradigm.