Nature's Benefits

Sustaining life and cultural connections to Nature's Benefits

Background

There are over 163 tribes in California with 109 as federally recognized. These federally-recognized Tribes have received federal recognition status through acts of Congress, presidential executive orders, or other federal administrative actions or federal court decisions.

• Federally-recognized Tribes are sovereign nations in a government-to-government relationship with the United States.
• They are entitled to funding and services from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and all federal agencies. (All U.S. agencies have trust and responsibility to honor Tribal rights.)
• Tribes connect to California's national forests, having been historically held by Indian Tribes.
• These Tribal ancestral homelands contain traditional areas and sacred sites still culturally significant to Tribes today as they:
  • Connect High Country, or  to higher elevation lands.
  • Connect with the Tribal House of Worship that serves the Creator, with Tribal people as stewards of the land.
  • Connect Tribes to place, culture and collective memories — e.g. gathering resources, tradition ceremonies, family gatherings.

These locations are identified by an Indian Tribe as having spiritual and cultural significance greater than the surrounding area itself

Access to resources

• For over 1,000 years fire has helped prepare food and medicine and manage the forest.
• Due to a century of suppression activities on California's national forests, along with other natural disturbances, native edible and medicinal plants have been choked out by dense tree stands and vegetation. And the normal diversity of plant species has lessened.
• As a result, Tribal people have been unable to maintain traditional diets as native plants disappeared from the natural system.

• In addition, spiritual journeys which traditional practitioners engage in (through 10-day annual, isolated journeys to specific sacred sites to pray and gain knowledge about their people, nature, lands and sustenance.) 

  And some Tribal ceremonies have become difficult to complete due to growing public interest in these sites. The Farm Bill allows the Forest Service to temporarily close and limit public access to these areas for ceremonial occasions

Today, Tribes still rely on Nature's Benefits for:

• Water: Mountain, meadow, river and stream water
• Food/Gathering: Acorns, berries, mushrooms, bulbs and leafy plants, sage, fish, salt, cedar trees, grey pine, sugar pine, plus game animals (such as deer and elk) and obsidian
• Medicines and Spiritual/Cultural Uses: Mountain Balm, Yew and Yerba Buena vines
• Recreation/Economy: Visitation to redwoods and other outdoor sites

How Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) helps maintain or enhance Nature's Benefits

Case study: Six Rivers National Forest Western Klamath Partnership Restoration (WKRP)

Developed in 2014, the WKRP is a response to congressional direction for land management agencies to address fire management challenges on a larger scale.

One of two forests in California selected, the Six Rivers National Forest is working collaboratively with all advocates and across all landscapes, integrating Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and Western science to achieve three goals:

1. Resilient Landscapes
2. Fire-Adapted Communities
3. Safe and Effective Wildfire Response

• A portion of the WKRP included the Forest Service using TEK from the Karuk Tribe on fuels and timber treatments that met the Wildfire Management Strategy of fuels reduction, while also addressing concerns for the Tribe on access, careful identification, and cultural sites.
• Forest Service Heritage staff gained TEK from the Karuk Tribe on cultural site identification and previously unknown plant species.
• In addition, the Forest Service and Karuk Tribe were able to work together on areas of agreement to comply with the National Historic Preservation Act.
• As a result, valuable TEK was included in GIS data and drove the prescription and treatment in the field.
• This collaboration enhanced reduced fuels, to mitigate high severity fire and make the landscape for firefighters safer.
• Plus, the thinning and reducing fuels around trees of interest producing acorns allowed regrowth of cultural plants for food and cultural burning.

Case study: Cleveland National Forest Works with Tribes to Reduce Severe Wildfire and Train Cultural Resource Specialists

The Cleveland National Forest and the Pauma, La Jolla, Rincon and Pala Indian Reservations, along with many others in the Southern California area, established beneficial relationships over the years.

• Forest is assisting the Pauma Reservation in developing a prescribed burn program with the help of the La Jolla Reservation.
• The Prescribed Burn Plan Group includes La Jolla, Pauma and Rincon Tribal members and the Forest Service working along with the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
• The first priority focuses on restoring the Pauma Forest reserve, significantly impacted by destructive wildfires every 20-30 years from fire originating off of the reserve.
• By reducing competition from invasive plants through prescribed burning, the group hopes to increase the health of Nature's Benefits to include: black oaks, medicinal plants, and grasses used for traditional purposes.
• Treatment efforts seek to drop fire back onto the ground when it reaches the Pauma Reserve, allowing low-to-moderate fire to become a healthy part of the ecosystem.
• Finally, the training Cultural Resource Specialists to work with firefighters will ensure sacred and historical sites are identified and treated appropriately during wildland fires.

How you can help

California's national forests provide an abundance of Nature's Benefits to California Tribes, communities and visitors — from traditional cultural access and gathering opportunities, to drinking water, recreation opportunities, carbon sequestration, local jobs and income.

To ensure benefits continue to be available for all people and future generations, we encourage volunteers and citizen stewardship.

And remember to leave no trace when you visit the forest. Please take out what you bring in, including your trash.

Archaeological Resources Protection Act
It is Illegal to excavate, remove, damage,or otherwise deface any archaeological resource located on public or Indian lands. Damage to archaeological sites in excess of $500 is a felony punishable by up to $250,000 in fines and imprisonment for up to two years for the first offense. All materials, equipment and vehicles used in the commission of such crimes are subject to forfeiture.

Sierra Nevada Meadows

What is a meadow?

• A meadow is an area where shallow groundwater enables grass-like plants and wildflowers to flourish.
• The Sierra Nevada Meadows has more than 18,000 meadows across almost 280,000 acres — of which 102,000 acres are on California's national forests.¹
  • The largest — the Monache Meadow — is nearly 4,600 acres on the Inyo and Sequoia National Forests.
• On average, restoring one acre of meadow increases water yield by a half acre foot of water per year,² the equivalent of:
  • Covering a football field 6 inches deep in water... or enough water for an average CA family for 1 year.³

Why do meadows matter?

Water storage and groundwater in the Sierra Nevada

Meadows in the Sierra Nevada retain and release water, critically important for the hydrology of California. In fact, over 60% of the state's water supply originates in the Sierra Nevada,⁴ for which meadows are key components to regulate water flow, temperature and quality.

• During spring snowmelt, high streams flow over top streambanks and flood across healthy meadows — sinking into the soil to be stored as shallow groundwater.
• Groundwater moves very slowly through the meadows, adding cool flow during the summer when water is most needed.
• When we restore meadows by reconnecting the floodplain, we restore this flooding and seasonal water storage. Some streams that used to dry out during summer now run all year long, even during droughts.
• Meadow restoration reduces springtime flow and increases summer flows.
• For ranchers, restoration increases forage quantity and quality, reduces need for local irrigation, and increases range productivity by 300-500%.⁵

Critical Habitat

Meadows in mid-summer are a critical Sierran habitat requirement for many plant and animal species.⁶

Healthy meadows are natural sponges that soak up spring snowmelt and provide water during dry summer months. They also provide habitat for:

• Endangered great gray owls, one of the world's largest owls and a focus of the Institute for Bird Populations that identifies meadow restoration as a priority action
• Endangered greater sandhill cranes which breed in wet meadows of North Eastern California
• California's species of concern and state fish, the Golden Trout, which is native to the meadows of Kern Plateau and heavily impacted by grazing.
• Migratory birds in the Sierra Nevada
• Some of the highest levels of plant biodiversity on California's national forests⁷
• Grazing for cattle and other livestock by providing nutrient-rich forage⁸

Cultural value

Meadows have served as important Native American gathering sites for thousands of years and kept fertile by burning for many generations.⁹

Historically, some meadows in the Sierra Nevada were overgrazed by domestic livestock which impaired the hydrologic function of these landscapes and decimated a reliable food source for California's indigenous people. Nutritious perennial grasses were replaced with invasive non-native plants.¹⁰

In spite of these negative impacts to meadows, these landscapes continue to be a high priority for the revival and perpetuation of indigenous culture and biodiversity in the Sierra Nevada.

Carbon sequestration

• Though meadows cover only 2% of the Sierra Nevada landscape, they may contain roughly 1/3 of the landscape's soil organic carbon.¹¹
• Preliminary research indicates healthy meadows are net carbon sinks, whereas degraded meadows are net carbon emitters to the atmosphere.¹²

Recreation

• There is increasing evidence that regular contact with nature and greenspace — which includes forests, meadows and grasslands — positively affects physical health and mental well-being by reducing stress, enhancing mood, and offering a restorative environment for people to escape from the stresses of urban life.¹³
• Meadows also offer awe-inspiring scenic and recreation opportunities — like walking, bird-watching and fishing.¹⁴

Impact of unhealthy meadows

Nearly 50% of all Sierra Nevada Meadows on California National Forests are in need of restoration — or about 51,000 acres.¹⁵

As a result of the backlog, these meadows lack Nature's Benefits that support people, plants and animals.

Actions taken

The California Water Action Plan was developed to move California toward more sustainable water management to achieve:

• More reliable water supplies
• Restoration of important species and habitat
• A more resilient sustainable managed water resources system using healthy meadows

State initiatives such as Proposition 1 and the California Climate Initiatives (Cap-and-Trade) have restoration programs focused specifically on meadows.

The 2015 Pacific Southwest Region's Leadership Intent document speaks to restoration efforts that would restore at least 50% of accessible, degraded forest meadows. This would improve meadow habitat function and the ability to hold water longer into the summer when water is most needed.

The 2017 Sierra Meadows Partnership (over 20 partners), spearheaded by California Trout and a broad coalition of partners, signed a Memorandum of Understanding to restore and protect 30,000 acres of mountain meadowlands in the greater Sierra Nevada of California within 15 years.

Partnerships

Partnerships with downstream businesses and other users rely on clean and available drinking water for households, irrigation, recreation and economic prosperity. It is our California upper watersheds, which include meadows, that provide the water we all rely on.

How you can help

National forests provide an abundance services to the people of California: from drinking water to recreation opportunities, to carbon sequestration, local jobs, and income. Our history of fire suppression, tree mortality, drought frequency, and higher temperatures threaten the Nature's Benefits people and communities rely on in their daily lives.¹⁶ 

To restore forest health, we need to increase the pace and scale of forest restoration across the state. Communicating the Nature's Benefits from California's national forests and sharing a stewardship vision to bring more resources to bear for restoration, can sustain these benefits for future generations.

Sources

1 Meadows and GIS layers

2 Average across 64,000 acres of meadow. Nature Contact and Human Health: A Research Agenda Howard Frumkin, 1 Gregory N. Bratman, 2,3,4 Sara Jo Breslow, 3 Bobby Cochran, 5 Peter H. KahnJr, 4,6 Joshua J. Lawler, 3,4 Phillip S. Levin,4,7 Pooja S. Tandon,1,8,9 Usha Varanasi, 10,11 Kathleen L. Wolf, 4,12 and Spencer A. Wood 3,4,13

3 Water and drought

4 Primary watershed

5  A report to NFWF. Tate et al. 2011 

6 Graber, D. M. Status of terrestrial vertebrates in Sierra Nevada ecosystem project: final report to Congress 2, 709-726 (1996); Fites-Kaufman, J. A., Rundel, P., Stephenson, N.

7 Fites-Kaufman, J. A., Rundel, P., Stephenson, N.

8,11 Norton, J.B., Jungst, L.J., Norton, U., Olsen, H.R., Tate, K.W. and Horwath, W.R., 2011. Soil carbon and nitrogen storage in upper montane riparian meadows. Ecosystems, 14(8), pp.1217-1231.

9,10 Anderson, M.K., 2005. Tending the Wild. University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, California. Cunningham, F. 2007. Maidu Summit Consortium Land Management Plan Proposal and Working Document for the Pacific Forest and Watershed Lands Stewardship Council. Maidu Summit Consortium: Greenville, CA.

12 CA Sierra Meadows Partnership May 2018 Workshop

13 Health benefits of walking in greenspaces

14 https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/EHP1663.alt_.pdf, Nature Contact and Human Health Howard Frumkin, 1 Gregory N. Bratman, 2,3,4 Sara Jo Breslow,3 Bobby Cochran, 5 Peter H. Kahn Jr,4,6 Joshua J.Lawler, 3,4 Phillip S. Levin, 4,7 Pooja S. Tandon, 1,8,9 Usha Varanasi, 10,11 Kathleen L. Wolf, 4,12 and Spencer A. Wood 3,4,13

15 Sierra Nevada Partnership, Sierra Meadows Strategy, Nov 2016. 

16 Westerling, A. L., Hidalgo, H. G., Cayan, D. R., & Swetnam, T. W. (2006). Warming and Earlier Spring Increase Western U.S. Forest Wildfire Activity. Science, 313(5789), 940-943. 

17 Miller, J. D., & Safford, H. (2012). Trends in wildfire severity: 1984 to 2010 in the Sierra Nevada, Modoc Plateau, and southern Cascades, California, USA. Fire Ecology, 8(3), 41-57. 

National forests provide significant recreation and relaxation

• Research suggests that being close to a natural environment is healthy. And that living in a green environment provides a positive impact on stress and the amount of physical activity people engage in¹.
• Today, California's national forests and grasslands receive around 24 million visits annually. Visitors find a variety of outdoor recreation opportunities to stay healthy.
• In addition, parks and recreation sites motivate people to engage in greater physical activity when they provide amenities such as walking and hiking trails, bike paths, and other recreation resources.
• Seventeen million visitors to national forests engage in hiking and walking, downhill skiing, fishing, hunting, viewing nature, relaxing and driving for pleasure account for about  68% of all visits².
• Local availability and accessibility are key to facilitating routine day-to-day physical activity.
• In fact, people associate having more green space in their living environment to being healthier³.
• National Forests may provide public health benefits as a result of the outdoor recreation opportunities they offer, which include:
  • The advantages of access to diverse, and highly scenic open space lands via well-developed road and trail networks, and more specialized recreation resources such as rivers, lakes, and rugged terrain not often found in neighborhood parks.

Sources

1 Natural Environments—Healthy Environments? An Exploratory Analysis of the Relationship between Green Space and Health. Environment and Planning 35(10): 1717–31. (de Vries et al. 2003)

2 The National Visitors Use Monitoring (NVUM) https://apps.fs.usda.gov/nvum/results/A05002.aspx/FY2014

3 https://jech.bmj.com/detail/r5/landmanagement/?cid=jech/60/7/587.full.pdf

Region 5 manages more than 20 million acres of forests and grasslands across California which:

1. sustain almost 24 million annual visitors and over 40 million California residents;
2. more than half the state's water supply or the equivalent of over 11 trillion gallons of water flows from National Forest upper watersheds; has a $3.2B annual value of water market wholesale by sector in California, a $367B cost of water to LA households using 100 gallons per day (on a monthly water bill of $100), and a cost of $583M to San Joaquin farmers per acre foot; which helps support a thriving agricultural economy that generates more than $50 billion annually.

Other critical values from California's National Forests include:

3. hydroelectric power plants where more than 10,190 megawatts of installed hydro plant capacity has the ability to meet the power needs of over 7.6 million households;
4. $74 million in lumber and $118 million in forest wood products;
5. 1,554 million metric tons of forest carbon stocks, or more than half of the State's forest carbon, and
6. More than 18,000 jobs and $715,000 in labor income (wages) generated by recreation visitors.

Nature's Benefits provide provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural services that are the "natural capital" base of our nation's economies and communities.

Frequent wildland fires in California and climate change stressors, including drought and bark beetle infestation, are causing Region 5 land managers to target ecological restoration of wildlands and forests to make them more resilient to these disturbances.

By integrating Nature's Benefits analysis into forest policy, management, and research, we hope to strengthen the connection between National Forests and the benefits they provide, and communicate to those who benefit from them in ways that they value. Understanding how to quantify and qualify Nature's Benefits will allow us to assess landscape change over time, review and understand tradeoffs from management actions as well as communicate the benefits that come from

To restore forest health, we need to increase the pace and scale of forest restoration across the state. Communicating the Nature’s Benefits from California’s National Forests and sharing a stewardship vision to bring more resources to bear for restoration, can sustain these benefits for future generations.

1. Land managers in the Region are working with partners across all land boundaries to accelerate ecological restoration to maximize and sustain the critical benefits from nature people rely on in their daily lives.

• Efforts are being directed at sustaining or increasing the volume and reliability of the essential flow of natural resources and ecosystem services, including wood, fiber, water, air and water purification, flood and climate regulation, biodiversity, scenic landscapes, cultural sites, recreation opportunities, wildlife habitat, and carbon sequestration and storage.

2. Forest-level restoration activities seek to bolster and maintain Nature's Benefits that are quantifiable and physical in nature, such as water, air, and carbon, and benefit cultural values, including social and economic advantages.

• Cultural values such as recreation, solitude, spiritual experience and aesthetic values are critical to both social values and community economies because they contribute to the overall wellness of human beings and their livelihoods.
• Memories are created from recreating and spending time amongst the aesthetics associated with healthy forests creating significant value to families and communities.
• Wellness associated with exercise and the outdoors provides both social and economic values for both communities and the local economy (emphasis on recreation industry).
• Traditions associated with ceremonial and non-ceremonial activities on the forest are built and revisited as part of tribal life.

3. The region is exploring innovative solutions and partnerships to leverage its own work and accelerate the pace and scale of restoration to sustain and strengthen Nature's Benefits.

• Working with federal, state, local and private landowners, the region hopes to review trade-offs and decisions to be scalable and make people's lives better.

4. By communicating the value of California's forests, we strengthen people's connections to the land and Nature's Benefits.

• Positive benefits from the national forests in California impact people's lives now and for future generations.
• Ultimately, incentivizing citizen-stewardship and volunteerism on California's forests helps protect these important resources.

• WRI article: Investors Think They Can Make Money Reducing Wildfire Risk. A Forest Restoration Project in Yuba, CA Puts this Idea into Practice
• FS National Ecosystem Services
• Nature's Benefits Animation
• Conservation Finance