Share in the love of learning with respect to a restoration project that includes native species that are fire resilient, beneficial to pollinators and wildlife (including Northwestern Pond Turtles), and honors California Indian people
Date: Tuesday, February 11th
Time: 7pm
Location: MK Nature Center or Zoom (link to be provided )
Presenter: Michelle Stevens, guest professor traveling from California State University, Sacramento
Title: Bushy Lake Eco-Cultural Restoration Project Design – Integrating Cultural Keystone Species and Development of Culturally Significant Plant Associations
Description: The Bushy Lake Eco-Cultural Restoration Project (lower American River, Sacramento, CA) incorporates Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), Western Ecological Knowledge (WEK) and Traditional Resource Management (TRM) of the Nisenan, Miwok and Maidu traditions into restoration project site design and management (Zedler and Stevens 2018). The project demonstrates the development of Culturally Significant Plant Alliances based on cultural keystone species into the Bushy Lake eco-cultural conceptual restoration design. The planting palette includes developing proposed Cultural Plant Alliances to complement and expand upon CNPS Plant Alliances. Proposed alliances represent areas dominated by culturally significant species. Examples of cultural plant alliances include a) white root (Carex barbarae); b) mugwort (Artemisia douglasiana); c) dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum) and) tarweeds (Madia speciosa). A 2021 wildfire provided an unplanned experimental variable to document vegetation response. Experimental results demonstrate that cultural plants (adapted to millennia of Traditional Fire Management) were resilient and recovered within one year. Indigenous Environmental Justice mandates hand weeding invasive species (precluding use of herbicides), to prevent exposure to people gathering food, medicine, and fiber. The eco-cultural restoration planting palette recommends native, fire resilient, and culturally significant species.