PROGRAMS

BASIC

environment and conservation

The Yurok people are deeply connected to their homelands along the lower Klamath River and Pacific coast in Northern California, where the health of lands and waters has always shaped cultural life, food systems and responsibility to place. In this largely rural and remote landscape, clean rivers for fishing, healthy ecosystems for hunting and gathering, and thriving forests and coastal environments remain essential to daily life and cultural continuity.

Through Indigenous-led conservation approaches, the Yurok Tribe exercises its sovereign responsibility to care for these environments using generations of knowledge about how ecosystems function as interconnected systems. This work supports habitat health, biodiversity and climate resilience while strengthening the balance between land, water, animals and people across the broader region.

Support helps advance Indigenous-led conservation and land return while strengthening the tribe’s ability to steward forests, rivers and coastal environments for the benefit of people, wildlife and the living world.

Current Priority

The ‘O Rew Redwoods Gateway is a Yurok cultural and ecological site at the southern entrance to Redwood National and State Parks, brought back under tribal ownership through a landmark partnership with Save the Redwoods League after decades of destructive industrial misuse. The tribe is preparing to share this sacred landscape with visitors through Indigenous-led stewardship and cultural education rooted in living Yurok traditions. Investment is urgently needed to support ecological care, staffing and programming that will ensure ‘O Rew is sustained as a place of restoration, learning and respectful public access grounded in Yurok values.