- Details
- By Tribal Business News Staff
- Real Estate
The Tule River Indian Tribe plans to acquire 14,675 acres of blue oak woodlands from the Hershey Ranch in Tulare County, Calif., kickstarting rehabilitation efforts following 2023 flooding in the area.
A $2.4 million grant from the California Wildlife Conservation Board (WCB), in partnership with the California Natural Resources Agency and The Conservation Fund, will help fund the purchase of the land in the Sierra Nevada foothills. The Conservation Fund will act as an intermediary and expects to transfer the property to the tribe in early 2025, once grant funding becomes available, according to a report in SJV Water, an independent, nonprofit news site covering water issues in the San Joaquin Valley.
The property, which includes grassland, blue oak woodlands and riparian habitat, was once home to the Yokut and Tubatulabal peoples, ancestors of the modern-day Tule River Tribe. The acquisition will connect existing reservation easements, improving connections between the San Joaquin Valley and Sierra Mountains, according to a December news release from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Tule River Tribal Council Chairwoman Charmaine McDarment expressed gratitude to the WCB for helping the tribe restore its ancestral homelands. “As the climate crisis brings new pressures to address the effects of environmental mismanagement and resource degradation, the Tribe's partnership with WCB is an important example of building relationships based in collaboration and trust,” she said in a statement.
“The tribe remains committed to supporting co-stewardship efforts and fighting to ensure that disproportionate harms to Native American lands, culture, and resources are resolved in a manner that centers and honors Native American connections to ancestral lands,’ McDarment said.
The land will provide a habitat for reintroduced elk and beaver, and serve as a summer range for a wolfpack found near the tribe’s reservation in 2023. Conservation work is expected to restore and preserve the Deer Creek watershed, one of California’s last undammed waterways in California. While grant funding is solely for the acquisition of the land, the tribe’s next steps will be to evaluate the watershed’s upper reaches for what sort of restoration efforts are necessary.
Tubatulabal Chairman Robert Gomez told SJV Water he favors more land returns.
“We are absolutely, without a doubt, one of the most disenfranchised communities in California and the nation,” Gomez said. “Given the opportunity, I always encourage our council and other councils to take advantage of any land that could be returned to us.”
