By Date

UC Berkeley to offer new Master of Climate Solutions

College of Natural Resources - Thu, 12/26/2024 - 09:37
Image of attendees for Beahrs ELP for MCS December 26, 2024

Offered as a one-year program or a concurrent degree with the Haas MBA, Rausser College’s Master of Climate Solutions will empower leaders to enact solutions to the climate crisis.

Berkeley Analytics Lab Showcase

Department of Bioengineering - 9 hours 39 min ago
Join us for the Berkeley Analytics Lab Showcase from 12 pm to 2pm on Tuesday, April 23, 2024, where students will showcase data-driven solutions developed in the 2024 Analytics Lab Spring semester course. This showcase will explore the transformative power of analytics across an array of industries. From sports and entertainment to the forefront of fashion, finance, generative […]
Categories: Science News

Fostering Indigenous Co-Stewardship of Public Lands

College of Natural Resources - 10 hours 24 min ago
By Julie Gipple People holding hands in a circle on a hill [image caption]

Attendees of the field trip to Tolay Regional Park joined hands, reflecting on the area to which fire had returned after over 100 years. Photo by Lobsang Wangdu.

On a sunny Wednesday morning in Rohnert Park, California, Tribal leaders, Indigenous culture bearers, academics, and representatives of land management agencies from the places now known as the United States, Canada, and Mexico gathered for a two-day event focused on creating substantive, long-term agreements for Indigenous co-stewardship of public lands. Some attendees were meeting for the first time at The Event at Graton Resort and Casino, some were enjoying seeing collaborators in person after many meetings held via Zoom, and some renewed long standing relationships after too much time apart. 

Titled “Indigenous Co-Stewardship of Public Lands: Lessons for the Future,” the event was presented in partnership by the California Biodiversity Network (CBN) and the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria (FIGR), with grants from the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation and Resources Legacy Fund. FIGR’s significant contributions included providing the conference facility, planning, technology, food, and field transportation. Event partners included  the UC Berkeley Institute for Parks, People, and Biodiversity, California Natural Resource Agency (CNRA), The Stewardship Network, Hispanic Access Foundation, Native California Research Institute, East Bay Regional Park District, Indigenous Stewardship Network, and 30x30 California. 

The agenda included presentations on substantive, long-term co-stewardship agreements, hearing from proven communities of practice about co-management models, and offering attendees the opportunity to visit and learn about long-term co-management agreements initiated by FIGR at two Northern California places designated as public parks.

Advancing conservation, access, and resilience through Tribal partnerships

During the event’s opening remarks, Dr. Ana Alvarez, Deputy General Manager of the East Bay Regional Park District and a member of the California Biodiversity Network steering committee, referred to the Pathways to 30x30 report, issued by the CNRA on Earth Day 2022 that outlines priorities to advance the conservation of 30% of California lands and coastal waters by 2030, with three key objectives: protect and restore biodiversity, expand access to nature, and mitigate and build resilience to a changing environment through nature-based solutions. She said the report stressed that these objectives should be pursued while embracing a commitment to strengthening partnerships with California Native American Tribes. The conference aimed to address research priorities from the report and was intended to “spark a paradigm shift, laying the foundation for meaningful and mutually beneficial Tribal management and co-management of public lands by creating the opportunity to learn from successful models,” said Alvarez. 

Dr. Beverly R. Ortiz, Chair of the Native California Research Institute, also provided perspective as the event began. “Before there were public lands, before there was this thing called co-stewardship and co-management of public lands, there was stewardship of land. There was Traditional Ecological Knowledge. There were culture bearers,” she said. “It was a system of relationships—with creation, with previous generations, with plants, other animals, the minerals, the rocks.” Ortiz went on to acknowledge the “tremendous upheaval and change that Native people have endured, survived, and thrived through because of the generosity, the caring with kindness, the goodness of the elders.” It is these culture bearers and these elders, she said, whose resilience and forward-thinking formed the basis of all that’s being done related to co-stewardship today. 

Miracles, Healers The Honorable Greg Sarris, Chair of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. Photo by Lobsang Wangdu. [image caption]

The Honorable Greg Sarris, Chair of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. Photo by Lobsang Wangdu.

Next, The Honorable Greg Sarris, Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, spoke of Spanish and then Mexican colonization of Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo Tribes of Marin and Sonoma Counties. “What happened to the people happened to the land,” he said. “As we were put in missions, new species of grasses colonized the Indigenous grasses.” He further discussed the enslavement of Indigenous people through indentured servitude, vagrancy laws, and convict leasing, and how the state of California continued the environmental degradation started during colonization. “The water table in the area was lowered by 50 feet, and the last grizzly bear was killed,” he said. “By the 20th century, only 5 to10% of the Indigenous population remained, and the same percent of the original redwood grove was left,” he said. “The land was radically changed.” 

Sarris referenced a term in Kashaya, the language of the Western Pomo, which referred to white people as “miracles.” Elders told him they called white people “miracles” because they’d always believed that if you harm nature or one another, something would come for you—you’d “get fixed.” But the white people arrived—killing animals and people, chopping down the trees, damming the water—and instead of getting punished, more of them kept coming. “Today, as we know, nobody turns out to be a miracle, because in fact, it's all coming back on all of us,” Sarris said. “There is no water, there is no air that isn’t poisoned. We know that we and future generations are being punished. But today we gather as Indian and non-Indian alike and want to change that. We know that we are all in this together. Luckily and miraculously, Indigenous knowledge survives. We can share.”

Sarris then described co-stewardship of public lands as an avenue to begin to heal the extreme damage done to both the land and the people.  He outlined the two co-stewardship agreements that FIGR has made. One, at Tolay Lake Regional Park in Sonoma County, is believed to be the first of its kind in California between a local government and a federally recognized tribe. The second is a precedent-setting agreement with Point Reyes National Seashore and the National Park Service. Sarris noted that the most important thing when negotiating co-stewardship agreements is that Tribes have at least 50/50 control, and even more when it comes to sacred spaces. “Co-management can’t be where we’re just advisors invited to the table but somebody else has power,” he said. “You make sure that regarding sacred sites, restoration, land use…that you have equal power to whatever agency you’re working with.”

He closed by acknowledging that the goal cannot be to restore everything to how it used to be. “There has been so much destruction that we need to work together to go piece by piece to restore and heal the land,” he said. “Just as none of us are miracles, all of us can become healers.”

California, U.S., and International Agreements

The event then focused on the topic of co-stewardship in present-day California, including presentations detailing: 

  • co-management at Point Reyes National Seashore; 
  • how the Karuk Tribe is moving from co-stewardship to co-management; 
  • the formal co-stewardship agreements between the Mooretown Rancheria of Maidu Indians and the Bureau of Land Management; and
  • expanding opportunities for Tribal partnerships with California State Parks. 
Cynthia Wilson (Diné), PhD student in ESPM, speaking stewardship efforts [image caption]

Cynthia Wilson (Diné), a PhD student in UC Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, discussing co-stewardship efforts at Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah. Photo by Lobsang Wangdu.

Many lessons learned, examples, and useful resources were shared, including the Karuk Tribe’s climate adaptation plan and resources related to how to approach possible agreements at the state park level. 

Next, the presentations broadened scope to agreements in other states in the U.S., with sessions moderated by Patrick Gonzalez, Director of the UC Berkeley Institute for Parks, People, and Biodiversity. These included discussions on:

  • grassroots strategies at Bears Ears National Monument, Utah; 
  • co-stewardship of Grand Portage National Monument on Lake Superior between the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and the National Park Service; and
  • formal funding agreements for co-stewardship of the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska between the Council of Athabascan Tribal Governments and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

Cynthia Wilson (Diné), a PhD student in UC Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management began the conversation on co-stewardship efforts at Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah. Wilson is a founding member of the Women of Bears Ears initiative, which seeks to restore Indigenous women’s matrilineal roles and rematriate the earth. She has been active in the efforts to establish Bears Ears as a National Monument. Wilson illustrated how changing presidential administrations have affected Bears Ears, with President Obama designating the 1.36 million acre monument in 2016 followed by President Trump reducing the monument’s size by 85%, and then President Biden reinstating the monument to its original acreage. Due to the controversy, signs were not posted at the monument until about a year ago, she said.

“The presidential proclamation highlighted that Traditional Ecological Knowledge is itself a resource to be protected, and to use for understanding and managing this landscape sustainably for generations to come,” Wilson said, adding that “the land itself is essential to each of our cultures and tribal nations.” She continued to describe how Tribes in the area of Bears Ears interact with the land. “Our ceremonies originated from this place; we go there for firewood, medicine, for food, for art,” she said. “Part of this movement is this place being a living landscape. It's really that restoring that symbiotic relationship of the land and of the people.”

She highlighted the restorative relationships, saying “access to the land is more important than highlighting Indigenous knowledge, because we don't share our knowledge—we practice it. We need to be actively present on these lands for healing of the people and healing of the land.” 

Wilson described some activities that exemplify restoring a relationship to cultural resources, including a study on firewood research that consulted with elders; her work rematriating Solanum jamesii, a tiny white potato that is an ancestral food documented 11,000 years ago in the southwest region; and a New York Times Op-Ed published by the Women of Bears Ears.

Co-presenter Gavin Noyes, Arts, Advocacy, and Healing Program Coordinator with the nonprofit INDIGENOUS LED, discussed the importance of nonprofit organizations—in addition to federal and state agencies—in supporting co-stewardship movements. He stressed that nonprofits can be especially helpful when Tribes have little capacity and infrastructure to advance their goals of protecting public lands. 

A woman and a man are both speakers or presenters [image caption]

Left: Minneth Medina, Director of Junta Intermunicipal Biocultural del Puuc (Mayan), speaking on biocultural governance in the Mayan region of Puuc.  Right: Armando Quintero, Director of the California Department of Parks and Recreation, outlining options for expanding Tribal Partnerships with California State Parks. Photos by Lobsang Wangdu.

After a lunch break during which attendees continued to make connections and share ideas, afternoon presentations turned toward co-stewardship of public lands internationally.  These sessions were moderated by Jonathan Jarvis, board chairman of the Institute for Parks, People, and Biodiversity. Speakers discussed: 

  • Formal management agreements between First Nations and Parks Canada;
  • Community-led conservation collaborations between Indigenous and Local Communities in the Yucatan Peninsula; and 
  • Biocultural governance in the Mayan Region of Puuc
Inspiration and Activation

The day’s presentations ended with a Q&A session and an opportunity for open-mic audience reflections, which included discussion of how co-stewardship works with Tribes that are not federally recognized as well as attendees expressing thanks for the resources shared throughout the day.

Jon Jarvis noted that a forthcoming issue of Parks Stewardship Forum, a free online publication of the Institute for Parks, People, and Biodiversity and the George Wright Society, will capture the ideas, lessons, and models mentioned during the conference and make them available in 2025. “The issue will focus on how to scale, and push for every agency to enter into an agreement that truly creates co-stewardship,” he said. 

Don Hankins (Plains Miwok), Co-Lead of the Indigenous Stewardship Network, urged attendees to use this event as an activator, and go on to explore opportunities to push new boundaries and forge new arrangements. “We came to the meeting; now what's the action we will take?” he said. 

Traditional artifacts [image caption]

Left: Artist Martina Morgan, Kashia Pomo Tribe, displayed a miniature Pomo cradle, a seaweed tray made from willow, clapper sticks, and willow tied up for basket making. Right: Robin Meely, Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, holding an open twine willow bird catcher.

 

The day’s formal events were followed by a reception hosted by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, during which attendees could take in several cultural presentations, visit cultural display tables, and sample cultural foods. The following day, field trips to Point Reyes National Seashore or Tolay Lake Regional Park allowed members of FIGR to elaborate on their historic co-stewardship efforts on those lands. At Tolay Lake, park staff shared stories of the many years of dialog, building relationships, and identifying common visions and goals for the park. The PhD work of ESPM assistant professor Peter Nelson, which documented archeological evidence of Indigenous communities who lived on the land, was also discussed. In addition, speakers noted that last year fire was restored to the park’s grasslands for the first time since Spanish colonization.

In comments concluding the formal proceedings of the day, Gregg Castro, (t’rowt’raahl Salinan/rumsien-ramaytush Ohlone), Vice-Chair of the Native California Research Institute, noted that a resounding theme throughout the day was on the importance of relationships, and stressed the value of the work being done. “It's not an easy road, but it's the right road,” he said. “It's not business to us…it's our heart and spirit that we put into this. We’ve learned the tools of business in this new world that we have to live in, but it's who we are and what we do. We’re not from the land, we’re of the land, and the land is of us. And that’s the only way we can do it.”

People in group where one i holding up a poster, and in the second picture there are two people squatted down on grass observing a frog [image caption]

Left: Freddie Romero (Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria) during the field trip to Tolay Regional Park, showing a map design for a new outdoor event, educational, and performance space co-designed by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria and the Sonoma Regional Parks. Right: Clinical Herbalist/ Traditional Practitioner Sage LaPena (Nomtipom Wintu) showing a Pacific Chorus Frog to attendee Isaiah Thalmayer, Senior Project Manager at Point Blue Conservation Science. Photos by Lobsang Wangdu.

Congratulations 2023-24 Outstanding GSIs!

Department of Bioengineering - 11 hours 6 min ago
Congratulations to Outstanding GSI Award Winners for 2023-24 from BioE courses: S. Erfan Ghazimirsaeed, Chinmoy Saayujya and Madeleine Snyder (BioE PhD Student)! The UC Berkeley Outstanding GSI Awards are given to the best GSIs of the year, nominated by the course instructor.
Categories: Science News

Understanding the velocity of climate change

College of Natural Resources - Wed, 03/27/2024 - 12:08
Dean David Ackerly in conversation with  the Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young March 27, 2024

Dean David Ackerly recently spoke before the congregation of San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral about climate change and our changing world.

Utility-caused wildfires are becoming a national problem

College of Natural Resources - Mon, 03/25/2024 - 11:33
Image of a fire occurring near or within electric lines March 25, 2024

ERG professor Duncan Callaway spoke to the New York Times about a recent Energy Institute working paper that analyzed PG&E's wildfire mitigation efforts.

Student Spotlight: Trinity Reimer

College of Natural Resources - Fri, 03/22/2024 - 12:58
Headshot of Reimer in a white dress behind a scene of greenery March 22, 2024

Fourth-year microbial biology major Trinity Reimer has taken full advantage of the extracurricular and mentorship opportunities offered by Rausser College and UC Berkeley.

Plans for water equity in a warming world

College of Natural Resources - Thu, 03/21/2024 - 12:08
Image of a water ditch March 21, 2024

A collaborative research project led by Cooperative Extension professor Ted Grantham will develop new planning tools for sustainable, inclusive, and equitable water distribution for the state’s nearly 40 million residents.

Mapping waters of the U.S. using new tools

College of Natural Resources - Tue, 03/19/2024 - 11:42
Image of large river/body of water surrounded by greenery March 19, 2024

ARE PhD candidate Simon Greenhill and alum Hannah Druckenmiller, PhD '21 ARE, speak with Resources for the Future about their work using machine learning to predict Clean Water Act regulation.

Insects, algae and our changing climate

College of Natural Resources - Mon, 03/18/2024 - 14:15
A photo of two people kneeling down and examining artificial stream channels March 18, 2024

A new PNAS  study led by ESPM professor Albert Ruhi and grad student Kyle Leathers suggests that drought may reshape California's mountain waterways—and the ecosystems that depend on them—by the end of the century.

Wind turbines have little effect on US property values

College of Natural Resources - Mon, 03/18/2024 - 12:26
A photo of a wind turbine in between the roofs of two homes. March 18, 2024

The values of homes within a wind turbine’s viewshed drop only slightly and temporarily, according to a new PNAS study co-authored by Maximillian Auffhammer.

Karine Gibbs on microbiology and mentorship

College of Natural Resources - Fri, 03/15/2024 - 12:14
Gibbs Packard Thumbnial March 15, 2024

The PMB professor and former Packard Fellow speaks about her research on complex bacterial behavior and encouraging scientists to bring their authentic selves to work

A BIG thanks for a successful Big Give!

Department of Molecular and Cell Biology - Thu, 03/14/2024 - 16:02

Big ThanksThank you to our wonderful community for helping us reach our fundraising goals during Big Give! Your commitment, generosity, and participation yesterday are inspiring and make a real difference in our students’ and postdocs' lives. 

New Agricultural Operations Building now open at the Gill Tract

College of Natural Resources - Wed, 03/13/2024 - 13:59
Gill Tract Building thumbnail March 13, 2024

The new facility provides meeting, storage, and workshop space to Rausser College researchers and Gill Tract farmers.

IB Participating in Big Give 24

Department of Integrative Biology - Wed, 03/13/2024 - 12:20
Graduate students in front of T-rex in Valley Life Sciences Building

This Thursday, March 14 is Big Give, the annual online giving day when the entire UC Berkeley community comes together to support their favorite departments and programs. Join us this year in our support of the Department of Integrative Biology. Every gift makes a difference. On March 14, follow this link to donate to IB and show your support for our students.

Categories: Science News

Molecular Therapeutics Initiative launches to accelerate drug discovery

Department of Molecular and Cell Biology - Wed, 03/13/2024 - 09:02

MCB faculty Nomura, Rape and Zoncu lead the MTIMCB's Molecular Therapeutics (MTx) division announced today the launch of the new Molecular Therapeutics Initiative (MTI) designed to accelerate drug discovery by tackling the "undruggable" & discovering new therapeutics modalities. Read more...

A missed opportunity to accelerate corporate action

College of Natural Resources - Mon, 03/11/2024 - 14:42
Image of Factory releasing smoke March 11, 2024

Professor Dara O'Rourke writes about the lobbying efforts that led the Securities and Exchange Commission to water down its climate disclosure regulations for the MIT Technology Review.

In Memoriam: David Wood

College of Natural Resources - Fri, 03/08/2024 - 13:51
Portrait image of David Wood March 08, 2024

The accomplished forest entomologist and renowned bark beetle expert died February 10. He was 93.

Science Perspective: Amphibian hatchlings find mother’s milk

Department of Integrative Biology - Fri, 03/08/2024 - 10:50

Caecilian babies around the mother’s vent. Credit Carlos Jared

Integrative Biology Professor of the Graduate School, Marvalee Wake, shares her thoughts on recent findings about amphibians that provide "milk" to their young. Read her perspective in the journal Science here, and read more about the discovery in the New York Times article.

 

Categories: Science News