The work we're doing today is
restoring the oak habitat and what we're doing is we're coming through, we're thinning out
the conifers, the Ponderosa and smaller ones
that aren't going to be able to make it
and reducing the fuel ladders for it and opening it up for the larger ones so that
they can continue to grow.
Joe Ochoa has been working on the oak restoration project for 4 years.
The oak restoration initiative began in 2010.
Lomakatsi partnered with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on a series of
smaller oak restoration projects on private lands.
And then we began to look at the landscape scale
approach to identifying critical, biological hot spots
oak habitats in need of restoration.
Lomakatsi Restoration Project
got involved. We knew that they worked in oak woodlands
and that was just a natural fit for them to become the
main leader in putting together the CCPI proposal.
The focus of our oak habitat program
is obviously a habitat restoration for
migratory birds, for wildlife species
for plants, threatened and endangered plants, but simultaneously
as we're restoring that habitat, by reducing the conifer encroachment on oaks
we are also reducing the, abating the threat of wildfire by reducing fuel hazards
in our restoration efforts.
We developed a partnership with the Klamath Tribes
and also a workforce development program in restoration training and
we engage that work force and they got incorporated into our
oak restoration initiative.
During our thinning to restore habitat we generate a lot of
products and firewood is one of the byproducts of the restoration.
And we're able to distribute that wood in the communities where we work and live.
A lot of changes have happened across the landscape
in oak woodlands here in the Pacific Northwest. The places where oaks like to
grow are also the places that people like to live
or build human infrastructure, whether it's
parks or subdivisions, but also things like wineries and
that ends up being one other threats that the oak woodlands face today.
Native Americans applied prescribed fire to the landscape
which enhance the oak woodlands,
but as soon as settlers came in,
basically they started suppressing fire and you saw conifer intrusion
which, when you apply prescribed fire, it usually takes care of all the little
seedlings and enhances the oak woodland.
Oak woodlands, oak habitat in Pacific Northwest is crucial to
over 200 species of wildlife, whether you're talking about migratory birds
black bears, black-tailed deer. Some of these birds would literally disappear
if the oak woodlands weren't here. Good examples include
the Acorn woodpecker, Lewis' woodpecker
but there's other things like the oak titmouse, white-breasted nuthatch
and Jays another species. While oak woodlands are extremely important to this
suite of wildlife, they're also extremely threatened
and they're probably some the most threatened habitats,
especially for birds, in the country.
We began working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service through the
Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program.
We had been implementing oak restoration projects
independently and Dave Ross
had a real interest in oak restoration. We had been implementing oak restoration
so we started to
put our minds together on how to engage landowners
and expand oak habitat restoration in the mid-Klamath watershed.
We realized that
we wanted to approach this from a landscape aspect and so
we started thinking about ways to create a funding source
that would extend over several years and that's where
it was actually suggested to us by NRCS. They had a
Cooperative Conservation Partnership Initiative
and so we worked with Lomakatsi and we put in,
we wrote a proposal with a budget and it did get funded.
The requirement of the CCPI was that
a third party had to submit that application
and Lomakatsi, you know, stepped up.
So we got three counties together, three offices of the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and three offices of the
Natural Resources Conservation Service and packaged this
landscape scale, cross-boundary, cross-state
initiative to restore oak habitats in Southern Oregon and Northern California.
Implementing this oak habitat restoration project has a lot of working parts,
so we have basically formed a partnership board that
would meet regularly and have a lot of communication
through the planning.
The whole operation is organized based on those biological windows,
and those operational windows when we can on put fire on the ground,
when the birds are nesting.
And all this occurs with a lot of communication
and a yearly work plan, an annual work plan on how we're gonna
orchestrate our restoration activities.
So as we implement, we're learning things
and this partnership has a feedback loop of information
that is then stored quantitatively in monitoring data.
Through the whole process we're communicating, we're engaging,
we're sharing information and we're also engaging the community and the
landowners in the process. And that's another thing, the landowners are
a key partner in this whole process. They're promoting it to
their neighbors so that's how the project grows.
What makes this oak habitat restoration project work is the partners.
The key elements to a successful partnership primarily three things:
really good clear communication, trust, building trust is crucial,
and being flexible to make sure the partnership works on the ground.
There's challenges that
any partnership has and I think being able to
understand where people are coming from, what their constraints are,
is really vital.
That partnership is instrumental in today's economy
because of the cutbacks.
Leveraging resources through the partnership where
the different skill sets that folks have
and can bring to the table is very important.
It takes everybody involved
because not everybody knows everything but,
if everybody puts in a little piece, then it works.
It again takes a team of people that understand different aspects
of restoration on the ground to be able to have those
sometimes difficult decisions and figure out how we can meet multiple objectives
for conservation as well as landowner needs.
The Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program,
we internally address any regulations that may be
necessary for landowners. We take care of that internally so the
landowner does not have to deal with it, doesn't have to think about it
and thats that's the way we build trust with landowners and get the
restoration on the ground as fast as possible.
The engagement with private landowners
is gonna be essential to the restoration of oak woodlands.
The unique nature this project is we're
restoring oak ecosystems while sustaining
livelihoods of local, rural communities.
So we're creating jobs and we're restoring habitat.
Successful projects happen because people
do work together and find that common ground.
What makes this project a success
is it's fostering local leaders who care about these ecosystems
and for the long term will be the stewards of these lands.
It is personal because
you know this is what I've done a lot of my life.
I've logged, I've worked in the woods and I like being out here because
it does a great wonder for everything around.
For the people, for animals for
the trees and everything.
We're restoring it one acre at a time,
but in all reality we're restoring a whole landscape.