Rooted in Stewardship

A place becomes a home when it is known.  

Dwellings, Linda Hogan

Like countless others, I had only ever breezed past the Rogue Valley on the I-5, until about a year ago when I took a job with The Nature Conservancy (TNC). On my first day, my coworkers whisked me into the Ashland watershed, through an area which had been tended to through the Ashland Forest Resiliency Project. For years, they had stewarded and monitored that land, learning every valley and every rise, and how to unlatch the sticky gate just right.

Having seen it before ecological thinning and controlled burning, they glowed with pride at the sunny forest floor blooming with manzanita and native grasses. Beyond textbook forestry work, their love for the land was palpable. Forest restoration came alive through stories such as the one about a Pacific fisher mother raising her young in a legacy oak once the work was complete.

Through TNC and forest collaboratives such as the Klamath Siskiyou Oak Network (KSON) and the Rogue Forest Partners (RFP), I quickly met many dedicated and wise conservationists, scientists and stewards. These partnerships are rooted in an all-lands approach, addressing critical forest health and wildfire mitigation efforts in strategic places and across ownership boundaries. Their deep knowledge of the land, the Ashland Watershed, the Applegate Valley, the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, and the Table Rocks was inspiring and awfully intimidating.

As part of my role with TNC, I became a steward to TNC’s generational flagship preserve in southwest Oregon, the Table Rocks. On my first visit, my predecessor in the role led me through a dense black oak grove to the lava rock ledge. She shared profound stories of the place, homelands of the Upland Takelma, Shasta and Latgawa peoples. Those two mesas hold deep cultural significance as home to creation stories, violently broken treaties, and bountiful orchards and gardens of first foods and resources. Elk, camas, yampah, river salmon, acorns, and so much more still laden this landscape and, though at a fraction of their historical abundance in the valley, they persist in the preserve.

Indigenous peoples are the keystone to the health of these sensitive ecosystems through their practice of active land management. With the forced removal of these communities at the Table Rocks, traditional stewardship was also stolen from the land. Low intensity fires, used often to clear underbrush and improve harvests, were lost, leading to severely overgrown oak groves. Now trees are encroaching on one another, increasing their risk of mortality due to competition and high-severity wildfire. Especially vulnerable are the large old oaks, known as legacy trees, established before established before the destructive forces of colonization suppressed traditional indigenous practices. 

In response to habitat threats, TNC and partners, including KSON, have implemented oak and prairie restoration projects at the Table Rocks. Hundreds of acres of ecological thinning, pile burning and diligent monitoring have touched down on the landscape, restoring open habitats to give oaks and associated native species more room to grow.

When I joined TNC, I humbly stepped into the ecosystem of land stewards of the Table Rocks. I have since returned many times to the oak grove I first stepped foot on. Joining in community and rooted in curiosity, we have cared for our legacy oak trees. It takes generations to know the Table Rocks — to know any place — fully. However, local stewards and knowledge holders in this valley have shown me that stewardship is a practice of patience, wherever you build your home. With care we invest in, listen to, learn from, and love deeply the places to which we belong.

If you would like to learn more or become involved with the work we do in southwest Oregon, please reach out to me at aubrey.may@tnc.org . I look forward to hearing from you!

Rogue Forest Partners: https://rogueforestpartners.org/ 

Klamath Siskiyou Oak Network: https://oakalliance.org/our-work/table-rock/ 

The Nature Conservancy in Oregon: https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/united-states/oregon/