Yurok Tribe Employs Innovative Approach to Ecosystem Restoration

The Yurok Tribe has begun implementing a critical phase to restore more than 60 acres of Prairie habitat, above Blue Creek.

Staff from three of the Tribe’s natural resources departments are hand sowing 900 pounds of native plant seed over Steven’s Prairie as part of an integrated effort to reestablish the grassland ecosystem and renew two miles of salmon and Steelhead habitat in Blue Creek, the most productive Klamath River tributary on the Yurok Reservation.

“Our goal is to restore the meadows to increase plant diversity and abundance that will provide habitat and food for wildlife from insects to Elk. Furthermore, many of the Prairie plants are used by Yurok people  for good, medicine and utilitarian purposes. Where our wildlife thrives, we thrive, as members of the ecological community,” says Tara Williams Claussen, the Yurok Wildlife Department Director.

Prairies have all but disappeared over the centuries. The Steven’s Praire project is the Tribe’s first grassland initiative. Over the last several weeks, Yurok Fire, Environment, Watershed and Roads Departments burned over the leftover woody debris and the small remnant of the original plan.

The Steven’s Prairie project is the first step in returning the prairies that laced the Ridgeline of Yurok Territory since time immemorial.