Dr. Kaitlin Reed, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Native American Studies at Humboldt State University examines Indigenous relationships to land and ecological management systems, rooted in responsibility & reciprocity, specifically highlighting the use of fire management in southern Oregon and California.

Brenna Bell, Policy Coordinator and Staff Attorney at BARK, shares how the history of colonization and land theft resulted in half of Oregon in the federal government's hands and the other factors drive federal (mis)management of public lands. 

Rachel and Jim Andras, from Andras Outfitters, give an introduction to the role of the Bear Creek Watershed as a spawning ground and rearing nursery for steelhead. Learn about the life history of these fish, how our development affects their survival and simple things all of us can do to help build a brighter future for this keystone species.

John Villella, Senior Lichenologist from Siskiyou Biosurvey and Deb VanPoolen, Southern Oregon Plein Air Artist introduce basic wild mushroom ecology and biology, with a focus on the many ecological interactions occurring between mushrooms and other organisms in our local forests. This talk will also cover the basics for solid identification of our most common edible species, with important information on how to tell edibles from their common lookalikes.

Erik Jules, PhD and Professor of Biology at Humboldt State University talks about two of the Klamath-Siskiyou's special species, Port Orford cedar and western trillium, each threatened by the way in which people have impacted the region. Port Orford cedar, an endemic conifer, continues to be threatened by an introduced disease, while trillium – a seemingly common plant of the forest understory – appears to be impacted by a changing climate.

Author Harry Fuller will explore with us the lives of Great Grey Owls. The Great Gray Owl has earned its mystique:  It is the tallest owl in North America, yet it eats small prey. It lives in areas of the western U.S. that are far to the south of the rest of the Great Gray Owl population around the Northern Hemisphere. We will talk about how they live, where they live and what you can do to see this phantom of the forest. Latest estimates indicate there are fewer than 300 left in California where it is on the state endangered species list.

Get ready to hit the trails this summer with our next episode in the Love Where You Live series, Trails of the Klamath-Siskiyou. Guest Speakers include Siskiyou Mountain Club, Pacific Crest Trail Association and Siskiyou Upland Trails Association. 

With guest speakers Keith Parker, Yurok Tripe Fisheries/Molecular Biologist & Kirk Blaine, Native Fish Society. Discover how the Klamath River Basin supports the highest diversity of lamprey species of any single watershed in the world, with the anadromous Pacific lamprey suggested to have been the river's biomass-dominant fish species historically. Ecologically, Pacific lamprey are important contributors of marine-derived nutrients and organic matter to the food web of headwater streams which are far inland from the Pacific Ocean. They also are a primary food source for marine mammals and likely a trophic level buffer to some species of migrating salmon as marine mammals preferentially consume Pacific lamprey. Culturally, Pacific lamprey are a tribal trust fish species protected under tribal treaty and continue to provide direct subsistence when other high lipid foods (e.g., salmon) are unavailable to Native American Tribes.

Nishi Rajakaruna fell in love with serpentine and all things geobotanical as an undergraduate student after reading a paper by Art Kruckeberg. Since then he has done research on the diversity, ecology, and evolution of plants, lichens, and microbes on serpentine and other harsh soils here in California as well as in eastern North America, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and Russia. As a member of the International Society of Serpentine Ecology he has botanized on serpentine outcrops across the world and along with Susan Harrison co-edited a book titled Serpentine: Evolution and Ecology of a Model System. Nishi will discuss what lessons plants and other biota of serpentine soils can teach us about basic sciences, including ecology and evolution, well as applied sciences such as conservation, restoration, and remediation practices.

The Klamath-Siskiyous has over ten times more serpentine soils and rocks per acre than virtually any other bioregion on Earth. This presentation will explore how and perhaps why this happened and how serpentine helps preserve dense seafloors on less dense land, thus widening continents. The abundance of serpentine here, its rarity elsewhere, serpentine's extension of northern range limits, and the fairly even coverage of different types of serpentine rocks also results in low extinction and/or high speciation and migration rates. Finally, how climate change impacts all these processes, generally at the expense of serpentine biodiversity, will be discussed.

Our guest speaker is Josh Norris, manager of the Yurok Country Visitor Center and Redwood Yurok Canoe Tours in Klamath. He has spent most of his career as a high school English and Social Science teacher, or as a Community Organizer or writing/developing curriculum. Our final webinar in this year long series will take us full circle from where it started. We began our Love Where You Live series with a focus on history of the Klamath-Siskiyou region, native lands, decolonization and public land managers. We will end our webinar journey together by bringing the past into the future with Traditional Ecological Knowledge from the Redwood Yurok Canoe Tours.