Brook Thompson on Podcast: Cultivating Place

January 19, 2023

Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History and the Human Impulse to Garden

"THE YUROK TRIBE'S REVEGETATION PLAN & UNDAMMING of the KLAMATH BROOK THOMPSON & JOSHUA CHENOWETH"

Listen here:

https://www.cultivatingplace.com/post/the-yurok-tribe-s-revegetation-plan-undamming-of-the-klamath-brook-thompson-joshua-chenoweth

Seen in overview, the 30 x 30 conservation efforts at federal and state levels are tremendous, but as the last two weeks’ conversations have made clear, it is at the landscape and local levels that these conservation efforts work or don’t work, get done or don’t, and ideally get done as thoroughly and thoughtfully as possible.

This week we focus in one specific and historic project at least 50 years in the making – the undamming of the majestic Klamath River. The final approval for the removal of a series of hydroelectric-production dams (whose installations date from the early to the mid1900s) was won in November of 2022. Dam removal is set to begin in 2023. We’re in conversation with two people, Brook Thompson and Joshua Chenoweth, engaged by the Yurok Tribe in preparing for the revegetation of the more than 2000 acres that will be re-exposed following the draining of the dam basins.

Brook is a Yurok tribal member, a Native scholar, civil engineer, water rights and cultural sovereignty activist, and Joshua is a restoration ecologist working for the Yurok tribe and leading the many-year planning and implementation of this complex revegetation process.

It’s all about re-connections. Listen in!