Tribal Council approves Fish & Wildlife agreement

By Danielle Harrison

Smoke Signals editor

Tribal Council approved a 10-year agreement with the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife Service Partners Program during its Wednesday, July 12, meeting.

The agreement will provide the Tribe access to more resources for restoration of the Tribe’s 463-acre Enchanted Oaks property in Marion County, according to Fish & Wildlife Program Manager Kelly Dirksen.

“This property is the only one that isn’t in the program,” he said during a Legislative Action Committee meeting on Tuesday, July 11. “They have helped us mow, provided grass seed and technical support on various conservation properties.”

In other action, Tribal Council:

• Approved a memorandum of understanding and a memorandum of agreement for the Tribe’s 670-acre Noble Oaks property outside of Willamina. The agreements will allow an Oregon State University student, who is also a member of the Long Tom Watershed Council, to research whether allowing goats to graze on sections of the property is more efficient than using herbicides for weed control. The property was donated to the Grand Ronde Tribe by The Nature Conservancy in 2019, which also gave the Tribe about $1 million in stewardship funding.
• Approved the 11 Tribe O’Link memorandum of agreement. The annual agreement is necessary because the Grand Ronde Tribe’s Indian Housing Block Grant service area overlaps with 10 other Tribes in Oregon and California. The federal government requires that Tribes in overlapping service areas agree on how to distribute funding and the 11 Tribes have agreed to use Tribal enrollment data instead of Bureau of Indian Affairs labor force statistics. The agreement includes the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians, Siletz, Klamath, Coquille and Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribes in Oregon and the Karuk, Quartz Valley, Tolowa Dee-ni’, Yurok and Fort Bidwell Tribes in California. The agreement will benefit the 11 Tribes with a total of $2 million in additional funding.
• And approved the Tribe's Natural Resources Department application for the America the Beautiful Challenge 2023 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. 

To watch the entire meeting, visit the Tribal government’s website at www.grandronde.org and click on the Government tab and then Videos.