Free event Monday focuses on how collaborative, community-based forest restoration can help
By Morgan Rothborne, Ashland.news
Collaborating together as communities to adapt how we live inside and around forests is the way to respond to increasing fire risk. That’s the idea Ashland-based nonprofit Lomakatsi Restoration Project will present at a free forum Monday evening in Ashland.
‘Using ancient knowledge for modern ends: making healthy forests’
Listen to Marko Bey and Belinda Brown talk about how traditional ecological knowledge of the region’s indigenous people helped manage forests for thousands of years on the landscape at 9:40 a.m. Wednesday, July 10, on the Jefferson Exchange on Jefferson Public Radio. Tune in on your radio, or go to ijpr.org. Miss the talk? It will be posted at this link shortly after the live airing.
“Collaborative forest management represents a holistic solution,” for ecosystem and community resilience, according to a Lomakatsi news release. Marko Bey, executive director and founder of the nonprofit, will speak alongside Belinda Brown, Lomakatsi’s tribal partnerships director.
The talk will highlight how Native contributions are “centered” in collaborative efforts to leverage state, federal and local resources for a holistic approach to wildfire risk reduction and forest health, according to a release from event organizer Ashland Together.
Ashland Together, Ashland.news and Oregon Shakespeare Festival partnered with Lomakatsi to make the free presentation possible.
The event will include the screening of a short film — “Tribal Hands on the Land” — featuring Lomakatsi’s Tribal Youth Ecological Forestry Training Program and its place in broader efforts to collaborate with tribes to “build more resilient landscapes,” according to the release.
The free event will be held from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Monday, July 15, at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Carpenter Hall, 44 S. Pioneer St., Ashland.
Registration is encouraged for the free event. To learn more about the event or register, visit the event page on Ashland Together.
Email Ashland.news reporter Morgan Rothborne at morganr@ashland.news.
