Tribal Sovereignty & The Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP series, Part 1)

The Northwest Forest Plan is one of the primary reasons that we have any forest left in the Northwest.  Without it, and other protections that are now also at risk because of the Trump administration, our public lands would look no different than the industrial clearcuts and monocrop tree plantations that surround me in the Coast Range.

In December, the Forest Service released its planned amendment to the Northwest Forest Plan in what is called a ‘Draft Environmental Impact Statement’, or DEIS, and we the public have until March 17th to submit comments on their proposal.

We are going to release several episodes focusing on the good, the bad, and complexities of the Forest Service’s proposed changes, and we’ll provide as much guidance as possible for how to submit comments and get involved in other ways.

You can find guides to submit comments in the notes of the podcast version of this episode, and we will also be sharing links to comment writing guides on our website and social media very soon!

For now, I’m so excited to start this mini-series off with Ryan Reed.  Ryan is from the Karuk, Hupa and Yurok tribes in Northern California, an Indigenous Fire Practitioner, wildland firefighter, co-founder of the Fire Generation Collaborative, and a member of the Northwest Forest Plan Federal Advisory Committee, among many other things!  Ryan is a thoughtful, dynamic speaker, and I’ve wanted to have him on Coast Range Radio for a long time.

Real quick before we get started, I love to get feedback, questions, show ideas or whatever else is on your mind.  My email is [e-mail].  If you appreciate what we do, please share this show with people in your community!

Show Notes:

https://www.firegencollab.org/

https://fusee.org/

Braiding Indigenous and Western Knowledge for Climate-Adapted Forests: https://depts.washington.edu/flame/mature_forests/pdfs/BraidingSweetgrassReport.pdf

Comment Writing Guides!

• Northwest Forest Plan DEIS Engagement toolkit: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MOAORP7b1YenBZsZj27qfBJiJU4b6oXAX6vXKtqdQ-w/edit?usp=sharing
• Recommendations for Tribal Sovereignty and Environmental Justice in the Northwest Forest Plan Amendment Draft Environmental Impact Statement: https://blogs.uoregon.edu/nwfpjustfutures/resource-guide-for-making-public-comment/

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