CALIFORNIA—As part of the celebration for Native American Heritage Month we celebrate the Bi-State Tribal Natural Resource Committee for their success and continued contributions. The committee focuses on landscape management at the California–Nevada border along the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Back in 2016, the Traditional Ecological Knowledge Summit was held at the Stewart Indian School in Nevada. It focused on pinyon pine management as well as sage grouse conservation. Federal, state and tribal leadership, as well as tribal members and interested citizens throughout the region, participated in this three-day event. The committee was created as a follow-up to the summit to continue the dialogue in a structured format through regularly scheduled meetings to ensure that tribes and agencies remained aligned in their conservation efforts.
 
The committee is a tribally created and led committee that inspires its attendees to broaden their perspectives and consider points of view that may be foreign to them. It aims to educate and facilitate communication between tribes and land management agencies. It also provides a forum for tribal members and tribal representatives to address concerns in the bistate area and advocate for sound management of natural and cultural resources that would include tribal cultural values.

With the advent of COVID, committee members capitalized on digital opportunities to cast a wider net and promote more participation. Today, the meetings are hybrid, making it possible to connect with a great number and diversity of partners. For those able to meet in person, food is shared, potluck style, while members share their dreams for landscape protection and preservation.

The most recent committee meeting was held Nov. 15. The meeting included a presentation followed by a panel discussion with representatives from the Big Pine Paiute Tribe, Tubatulabal Tribe, Mono Lake Kutzadika’a Tribe and Bridgeport Indian Colony. Participants shared their perspectives on the past and present as well as their future hopes for the committee.

The committee is funded and supported by the Executive Oversight Committee. It is a consortium of federal and state agencies that have overlapping and shared objectives and goals for the landscape to conserve the bistate greater sage-grouse and improve pinyon pine management.