Centering Community Priorities and Traditional Ecological Knowledge to Restore Biodiversity and Build Resilience on Tribal Lands

Projected changes in climate and disturbances will impact nearly every aspect of Indigenous community health, wellbeing, and lifeways. These outcomes increase the importance of understanding (1) how ecosystems may function as carbon sinks or sources in coming decades, and (2) how Indigenous communities are affected by these ecological impacts. The Coeur d’Alene Tribe (northern Idaho) has long had a goal of restoring the critically-endangered native prairie encompassing the Hangman watershed, and more recently, seeks to regenerate healthy forests. The Tribe’s goal focuses on how to manage its lands to ensure that key culturally and ecologically significant species are protected, while also restoring Tribal first foods and biodiversity. I present how the Coeur d’Alene Tribe is meeting this challenge by implementing a two-pronged Nature-based Climate Solutions (NbCS) approach on the Reservation. First, the Tribe seeks to restore the critically endangered Palouse Prairie ecosystem, which provides many culturally significant medicinal and food plants for the regional tribes and dominates the western region of the reservation. Managing the largest intact remnant prairie in Idaho and converting recently acquired agricultural land back to prairie supports the tribe’s broader biodiversity and first foods restoration goals with great potential for enhanced carbon sequestration. Second, the Tribe is converting annual grain production that uses conventional tillage practices to perennial grain production (Kernza). As a deep-rooted plant, Kernza production leads to soil carbon accumulation, and is much more climate-smart than currently grown regional crops with multiple co-benefits, including water quality and biodiversity impacts. Taken together, this approach utilizes a framework that measures baseline carbon stocks and implements a long-term monitoring program of carbon fluxes and stock changes to ensure these practices lead to measurable carbon emissions reductions or additional drawdown. This is completed in conjunction with the established Salmon-Safe certification program to ensure other co-benefits will still be achieved. Our work highlights the importance of Tribal community involvement in the development and deployment for successful NbCS implementation.