- Author: Adina Merenlender
This month's together@work blog brings you a special post exploring the background of the why, what, and hope in the LandBack movement in support of our tribal communities from Dr. Adina M. Merenlender and her co-contributor Beth Rose Middleton.
Tribal community members participating in the California Tribal Naturalist Course visit UC Blue Oak Ranch (Chitcomini 'Árweh Wallaka-tka) within the Thámien Ohlone (San Francisco Bay Costanoan) speaking territory. Photo by Adina Merenlender
The Berkeley City Council recently agreed to purchase a two-acre site (currently used for parking) known as the shellmound and a place of sacred ceremonies and turn over it over to the Sogorea Te' Land Trust, which is planning to restore the site to a place of gathering and ceremonies. This is an example of LandBack.
LandBack is a growing movement focused on returning land to Indigenous people, encompassing various actions to enhance their access to and stewardship of ancestral homelands. To fully grasp the movement's importance, one must understand the history of U.S. law, as rooted in the colonial Doctrine of Discovery, dating back to the late 15th century. This legal and theological concept was rooted in the idea that Christian European nations had the right to claim and control lands that were inhabited by non-Christians to justify European exploration, colonization and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples who were relegated to a non-human status. This worldview facilitated the colonization of new lands and the enslavement of Native people for extracting resources like minerals, animal pelts, forests, range and agricultural production.
The U.S. courts persist in upholding the belief that the U.S. government holds the ultimate right to own and control the land, regardless of the presence and claims of Indigenous peoples. This perpetuation leads to ongoing land dispossession and creates enduring barriers to land access, impeding Indigenous stewardship. Consequently, Native communities experience adverse effects on their well-being, cultural vitality and intergenerational knowledge transfer. LandBack is crucial for Indigenous people to steward the land in a manner that restores their reciprocal relationships dating back to time immemorial.
Some recent policies help enable the principles of LandBack. For example, California law (SB-18, 2004) recognizes tribes' ability to hold conservation easements on land in order to protect cultural resources, enable access and engage in stewardship; and requires state agencies to have tribal consultation policies. The Native American Ancestral Lands Policy (2020) facilitates tribal access, use and co-management of state-owned or controlled natural lands. Goals include prioritizing tribal purchase or transfer of excess land, establishing co-management agreements and providing grants for land procurement and conservation.
The LandBack movement is gaining momentum to address justice, promote Indigenous stewardship, protect the community of life and advance climate resilience thanks to tribal leadership and collaborations with a variety of entities, including individuals, religious institutions, land trusts, and local, state and national governments. Actions range from the full return of land without restriction to more limited agreements including enabling co-stewardship of land, especially on public lands such as federal or state parks, forests, and wildlife refuges.
UC's Tribal Lands Workgroup
Through leadership from the UC Office of President, a systemwide Tribal Lands Workgroup is focusing on the following topics. Members of the workgroup, with assistance from UCANR's Informatics and Geographic Information System, assembled a mapped inventory of UC lands as well as tribal territory and other land cover information. The workgroup has also researched existing systemwide memoranda of understanding or other agreements with tribes related to the use of UC land.
A good example is the memorandum of understanding developed between the UC Hopland Research and Extension Center (UCANR) and Hopland Band of Pomo Indians (HBPI) who manage neighboring lands. This agreement is designed to increase the educational, research, land stewardship and cultural exchange opportunities between HBPI and UCANR, and delineate areas where we can work together on specific projects. Given the interest in creating these types of collaborative opportunities, this agreement is likely just the first of more to come. This UC workgroup is also exploring the best way to develop and share guidelines for engaging with tribes about use of UC land consistent with tribal consultation processes and existing rules and regulations.
Participants of co-stewardship workshop listen to introductory remarks by Ana Alvarez, deputy general manager of the East Bay Regional Park District and California 30x30 Partnership Planning Committee member. Photo by Monica Hernandez-Juarez
Co-stewardship Workshop
To learn from existing co-stewardship models, several UC scientists including myself, Steve Monfort, director of UC Natural Reserves; and Patrick Gonzalez, executive director of UC Berkeley Institute for Parks, People and Biodiversity; worked with other California Biodiversity Council steering committee members and in partnership with the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria and with consultation from the Native American Research Institute to organize a workshop titled “Indigenous Co-stewardship of Public Lands: Lessons for the Future.” Funding was provided by the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, Resources Legacy Fund and Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria.
This workshop held in February 2024 was well-attended by tribal leaders, Indigenous culture bearers and staff from public land-management agencies, with a total of 536 registered for the livestream and approximately 300 in person.
Chairman Greg Sarris of Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria provided important context, examples of co-stewardship in action from Sonoma County and inspiration to do more. Samuel Kohn, senior counselor to Office of the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs, explained the various federal policies and guidelines that relate to co-management with tribes. The heart of the workshop was a series of co-stewardship case studies from California, other states and Canada. These were followed by examples of Indigenous people in Mexico engaging in stewardship and sustaining their livelihoods. A real snapshot of the topic across North America!
We spent the second day together visiting places now known as Point Reyes National Seashore and Tolay Lake Regional Park that have long-term co-management agreements initiated by Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. A more thorough summary of the workshop can be found at News from Native California by Tavi Lorelle Carpenter.
If you are interested in working with tribes and tribal communities, please join the UC ANR Native American Community Partnerships Work Group. Contact co-chairs Jennifer Sowerwine at jsowerwi@berkeley.edu and Christopher J. McDonald at cjmcdonald@ucanr.edu).
- Author: Saoimanu Sope
In California, natural and working lands make up 95 million acres of the state and play a vital role in building resilience to the impacts of climate change. University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources was awarded $1.7 million for the California Next Generation and Equitable Climate Action Plan, as part of the state's Natural and Working Lands Climate Smart Strategy and California's 30x30 Initiative, an effort to conserve 30% of the state's lands and coastal waters by 2030.
Natural and working lands include both unmanaged and managed areas actively used for agriculture, forestry or production purposes.
Chandra Richards, UC Cooperative Extension agricultural land acquisitions academic coordinator for Southern California, and Cristina Murillo-Barrick, UCCE's Black, Indigenous and People of Color community development advisor for the Bay Area, are leading the California Next Generation and Equitable Climate Action Plan project.
To build capacity and technical assistance for climate-smart action planning, Richards and Murillo-Barrick will use the Climate Smart Land Management Program funding, awarded through the California Department of Conservation, to focus on two of the most pressing climate action issues: equitable land access and land management diversification.
According to the 2022 U.S. Department of Agriculture census, demographic data indicates that California agricultural land ownership and production is concentrated within an aging and mostly White demographic. However, research suggests diverse management practices promote healthy landscapes. This has been shown to benefit the environment, human health and climate resilience in multiple ways.
For this reason, this project centers on “historically underrepresented communities,” a term that includes California Native American Tribes, communities of color, landless farmers, immigrant and non-English speaking communities and other agency-designated minority groups (racial, ethnic and non-male groups, socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, and California designated severely disadvantaged communities).
Focusing on Southern California, UC Cooperative Extension scientists will identify barriers to land access, management and opportunities to increase land manager diversity. They also will engage historically underrepresented communities in coalition building, capacity assessment and climate action planning.
Within the last few decades, Californians have faced increased ecosystem stressors and decreasing diversity of natural systems. This pattern continues to damage already-vulnerable communities (disproportionately historically underrepresented communities), while also worsening and intensifying climate impacts, including drought, wildfire, flooding and disease. Overcoming these kinds of systemic and structural challenges will require the next generation of land managers to reflect California equitably, while preparing them to take on climate resilience. The project will determine clear solutions and plans that enable long-term, strategic land use and protection.
To do this work, UCCE is collaborating with the Community Alliance with Family Farms (CAFF), California Association of Resource Conservation Districts (CARCD) and the California Bountiful Foundation, all of whom serve as subgrantees and will deepen connections with communities.
Organizations like CARCD have long served as “boots on the ground” personnel and have close relationships with landowners and land managers. “RCDs have been hearing the land equity need for a long time and are actively collaborating with different partners to tackle this pressing issue,” said Qi Zhou, program manager of Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at CARCD and member of the Strategic Growth Council Land Equity Task Force.
“California RCDs are excited about this project because it will allow major California agriculture and conservation partners to collaboratively develop plans and implement projects centering on equity land access and land management diversification,” Zhou added.
Project lead Richards said $270,000 of the grant will be reserved for new partnerships with organizations in Southern California that have experience with, and strong ties to, historically underserved communities.
UC ANR is collaborating with the California Department of Food and Agriculture as well as California Climate and Agriculture Network (CalCAN), and World Be Well, a Southern California nonprofit.
Tawny Mata, CDFA's director of the Office of Environmental Farming and Innovation, described technical assistance providers as being grounded in their local agricultural communities and recognized their importance to partners in the success of CDFA's incentive programs.
“When we do succeed in reaching historically underserved farmers and ranchers with our grant programs, it is often with the thoughtful support and planning of a technical assistance provider,” Mata said. “I look forward to this project helping us refine our own technical assistance funding programs and bringing technical assistance providers together to network and share best practices for improving land access and promoting climate-smart agriculture.”
“The successes of this project will elevate the voices of historically underrepresented communities, strengthening efforts in these communities to support climate action,” said Richards. Additionally, the project will increase sharing of regional reports, needs assessments and community plans surrounding climate-smart management practices. Finally, it will boost technical assistance for these groups specifically.
To learn more about the Climate Smart Land Management Program and this year's awardees, visit:
- Author: Elizabeth Moon
Photo by Saoimanu Sope, Staff Assembly Ambassador
Our Inaugural EDI Summit has brought together over thirty ANR colleagues celebrating the work and wins, while also focusing on the challenges to continue creating transformation within our organization. Together in community we have representatives from each Affinity/ERG group, Staff/Academic Assembly, Our Senior Leadership Team, DEI Advisory Council, Program/Workgroup Teams, and a few other staff whose roles directly impact EDI in their respective units.
We started off our first day, January 31, with a welcome from Vice-President Glenda Humiston who shared her perspective on the history, current conditions, and future vision of EDI work within ANR. Lively discussions followed with an opportunity to create a time line of wins and significant moments over the last seven or more years.
Our keynote speaker, Lady Idos, Chief Diversity Officer, Berkeley Labs continued our first morning by sharing her expertise in building stronger groups that impact change and support organizational goals in advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion. She shared the over ten year journey of the lab to creation of their IDEA office (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accountability). Lady Idos words inspired many ideas and conversations over the rest of the day.
With today, February 1, being our closing day, and the start of Black History Month, I am excited to bring the learnings of how we can continue to advocate, educate, and inform on issues around equity, diversity, and inclusion.
- Author: Brianna Aguayo Villalon
- Editor: Lorrene Ritchie
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP nationally, and commonly known as CalFresh in California, gives approximately 3.3 million college students access to essential food assistance. However, an estimated 57% of SNAP-eligible students do not enroll. The research team conducted individual and group interviews from February 2020 and December 2021 through Zoom to gain insight into the student SNAP application process from the perspective of CalFresh county agency workers. Through this qualitative approach, the research team aimed to better understand the student SNAP application process from the perspective of county agency workers. The study identified 5 central themes, in which county agency workers perceived the process as challenging for students, and burdensome for administration workers. The research study was recently published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior by Suzanna Martinez, Sonali Singh, and Erin Esaryk with the University of California San Francisco, San Francisco's Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Nutrition Policy Institute researcher, Lorrene Ritchie.
- Author: Mathew Burciaga, UC Berkeley Rausser College
A new book edited by UC Berkeley Rausser College researchers centers equity and justice while delving into the complex elements that support or constrain biodiversity in cities.
Research continues to show that development has created environmental hazards like factories, freeways, or power plants that are often disproportionately placed in low-income areas or communities of color, and that remaining natural resources in urban areas, like trees and parks, are concentrated in wealthier neighborhoods. With renewed attention placed on the role of conservation, researchers are exploring new ways to make cities and their inhabitants active partners in preserving biodiversity and mitigating climate change.
A new book edited by Rausser College researchers delves into the complex elements that support or constrain biodiversity in cities — including human-wildlife interactions, climate fluctuations, landscape diversity, and environmental racism. Edited by Environmental Science, Policy and Management professor Christopher Schell and former postdoctoral researcher Max Lambert, Urban Biodiversity and Equity: Justice-Centered Conservation in Cities offers scientists, decision-makers and practitioners a new model to develop solutions for managing urban biodiversity while centering social justice, environmental justice, and civil rights.
Rausser College spoke to Schell and Lambert about their book ahead of its Dec. 19 release in the United States.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What inspired you to create this book?
Max Lambert: We were invited to put together a book on urban ecology and biodiversity. We knew there were other books out there, but we knew we wanted to write a book through a different lens: specifically, we're building off a Science paper led by Chris that centers equity and justice as the primary axis for conservation work. That was our guiding principle for taking this from journal publications to something that people can hold.
Christopher Schell: This is something that Max and I have been discussing since 2018. After our Science paper came out in 2020, Max contacted me to discuss what it would look like to expand that paper as a larger volume. We connected with folks who reached out about the paper and others whose work spans the urban-ecological spectrum to coalesce their contributions into a book that integrates equity throughout.
We didn't want to fall into the trap of thinking that academic institutions somehow have a hold on all this knowledge. Max led our efforts in trying to convey how applied this field is and emphasize the field's interconnectedness. We were excited to get folks who could span what it looks like to think of these theoretical applications in biodiversity science in relation to a city.
Lambert: And because urban ecology has blossomed so much as a field during the past 20 years, we spent a lot of time determining what topics we knew we wanted to emphasize in this book and what we would put on the back burner. We also wanted to bring in people from different backgrounds, walks of life, career stages, or parts of the world who can tie the threads of equity and justice together with this science.
How would you say the field of urban ecology has evolved over time?
Lambert: There have been pockets of people studying urban ecology from the 60s onwards, but their research never became part of the dominant mantra. By the 90s, we had the National Science Foundation (NSF) support two Long Term Ecological Research stations in Baltimore and Phoenix, which helped blossom and lead this area of research. But in my experience, even when I started my doctoral work a decade ago, urban conservation wasn't really a thing—there were still tons of folks saying we needed to protect nature from the city.
Schell: For us, the question is, when do we recognize that urban ecology has entered the public consciousness to the point that folks outside the academic sphere are thinking about it? We're certainly getting there in the Bay Area, as well as in a handful of cities across the country and globe. Folks in these communities are thinking more and more about their relationships with wildlife, biodiversity and nature inside these urban spaces. But sometimes folks look at us like we're crazy when we talk about the critically endangered species that are encased in a metropolitan area, or when we tell them about the large carnivores that roam their backyard. Some people have not yet fully understood that cities are hubs of nature that we created on top of existing biodiversity hotspots.
How does this approach differ from traditional models of conservation research?
Schell: We're leveraging a past research framework called the ecology in, of, and for cities to propose something called conservation in, of, for and with cities. We're still thinking about the many ways in which we maintain biodiversity across different axes; incorporate biological, social, and built elements of cities to manage ecosystem processes; and implement justice-centered approaches as we build sustainable practices. But all that felt unidirectional, where scientists or practitioners are doing things for the people who live in the city.
Conservation in, of, for and with cities is the new atom. It's explicitly calling out co-production, how we have equitable resource distribution, and how we fold in the other paradigms. We're emphasizing that if we don't have conservation with cities, none of the other components are going to work. In our minds, this is the linchpin to all those other pieces. We're not the only knowledge holders in this conversation, and by no means do you need to be of a certain age, race, class or ethnicity to participate in it. We're all in this together and have something to add to the conversation.
Lambert: You can't do conservation work without cities. You can't grey out urban areas and focus conservation work elsewhere. It's all part of the mix. Conservation with cities means engaging in conservation work at any scale — from state to national to international. You can't set goals just for remote places; you have to bring them into urban areas as well. All this goes back to our fundamental principle of centering equity and justice in all conservation. It is heavily pronounced in urban areas, but it's central to conservation work anywhere in the world.
Ecology and evolutionary biology are fundamental fields of biology, but they don't exist in a vacuum. Our Science paper showed that we need to be mindful of how society, culture, and politics influence life on Earth. We're doing the same thing here with conservation.
Can you think of any people, cities or organizations that are taking the principles you describe in your book and using them to improve urban biodiversity?
Schell: Max and I often riff off of Singapore being the mecca of urban ecology because of how that city is designed and embedded inside of nature, but we're starting to make improvements on the West Coast, too. One of the local organizations that has been pushing urban ecology forward is the California Academy of Sciences. Their Reimagining SF initiative brings together researchers and practitioners from across the Bay Area to think about San Francisco not as an urban environment with nature sprinkled in, but as a city inside of nature — one built in collaboration with ecosystem processes. It's a clear departure from the ways in which cities have thought about urban ecosystems in the past, which was strictly concerned about providing municipal services to its people.
Lambert: I went to Canberra, the capital of Australia, in 2016. It's a highly built place, but they've embedded trails and green spaces throughout the city; there are kangaroos, wallabies, and all kinds of parrots everywhere. It's very clearly designed, as Chris said, in collaboration with nature. The Presidio of San Francisco has also been an interesting nexus of urban conservation work. The Presidio Trust, which manages the park with the National Park Service, has done tremendous work with communities nearby. They've replaced non-native plants that have overgrown the area, cleaned up a bunch of pollution in the pond, and reintroduced endangered plants within the Presidio.
I also work closely with the City of Tacoma in Washington. Maintenance workers — the folks who take care of the concrete, asphalt, and sewers—are not the type of people you traditionally think of as doing conservation work, but in Tacoma, they are so impassioned to make sure biodiversity can thrive, and people can experience it everywhere they live.
Have you found engaging with policymakers or community members difficult while conducting your research?
Schell: The flagship species that my lab studies is coyotes, a species that garners a lot of interest in the Bay Area. In SF, a good chunk of folks have a real love-hate relationship with them. They think that their cats have some agency to stay outdoors indefinitely or that their dog can stay off-leash in an on-leash area, which often results in conflicts with coyotes. And as we start doing more of this work, it seems as if everybody has a story about a coyote — or a bobcat, raccoon or a fox — doing something they adore or disdain.
These fine-scale human-animal interactions bring everybody to the table. They want to hear more about how these are connected to the larger universe of stories around urban biodiversity, environmental justice, equity and resilience because it impacts them at this individual level.
Lambert: Maps will become essential to these conversations and are what entice people to join. For so long, the image of conservation was just David Attenborough in the middle of the world somewhere, in a place we can't necessarily relate to. But now, I can set up a map on iNaturalist that everyone can contribute to and access for free. Whether it's a map of all the trees in their city or observations of turtles, frogs or hawks, people will be able to put themselves in the context of their city. They can actually paint that picture of the landscape — they can see the asphalt, they can see trees — and place their community in the broader grand scheme of the universe.
Schell: One of our flagship projects deploys camera traps across urban to wildland spaces. We put up placards that give out our contact information if people are interested in the project; we've had over a dozen people in the last year reach out to us who are interested in learning more about the camera traps, including city officials. A figure from our Science paper created by co-author Dr. Simone de Roches was recently republished in the New York Times, and after reading that, some folks from the City of Piedmont's Recreation Department reached out. This small example highlights how far-reaching and continually helpful the work has been in creating collaborations across the Bay.
Lambert: I think that's the power of urban areas for conservation and getting people engaged. They know where they fit into much more easily than if you were to ask, “How do we protect tigers inMumbai?” It matters in the grand scheme — people generally care about tigers — but they have no context for it. People have context for their backyard coyote: almost everyone has a story about something in their urban area; they're just looking for someone to tell it to.
Do you think it's possible to create policies that improve urban biodiversity without first addressing the inequities like redlining?
Lambert: There are two panels to the figure that was just republished in the New York Times. The panel on the right shows conservation embedded in a cycle of social justice, environmental justice, and civil rights: that's the foundation for which successful conservation efforts will ever be possible. You can try to chip away at it in small ways, but you will always fight an uphill battle unless you center equity and justice because the things that cause injustice and inequities also degrade the natural world. These things are inherently intertwined.
Schell: If we can't figure ourselves out and figure out how we got to this point while centering equity and justice —which is something we said in the Science paper and at the beginning and end of this book, and also urged all of our co-authors to talk about it — then we will never get to our goals. This book was something that we wanted to get out into the world because this is not something we're alone in; there are other folks who are also interested in this, who also feel the same way, and who have been beating this drum in their communities. It's been a good journey to be able to put this into words and have folks understand how important it is to be able to restore ourselves as a means of then going on to continue to restore the natural world.