PLUMMER, Idaho — Almost $1 million is coming to the Coeur d’Alene Tribe to help restore the Palouse native grassland.
$937,212 was awarded to the Tribe by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation to develop restoration strategies for the area, including native grasslands and alternative grains, to evaluate their potential and natural climate solutions.
It is one of six natural climate solutions grants awarded by the foundation to help mitigate climate change across the Pacific Northwest. Many of those projects are led by Native American and First Nations partners. Funding for all the projects totals around $5 million over three years.
“We are in a critical window where natural climate solutions have immense potential to accelerate climate change mitigation efforts while also providing key biodiversity and human well-being co-benefits,” said Yuta Masuda, director of science for the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation and co-author of several recent studies on natural climate solutions. “The Pacific Northwest is home to some of the world’s most transformative science and technology-based conservation efforts and policy innovations. These are high-integrity projects, bringing together some of the best talent and minds to tackle the unique challenges we face.”
The Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s project builds on work already done by the Tribe’s Natural Resource Department to establish a native Palouse prairie seed bank from the prairie land owned by the Tribe.
The Tribe will also research how restoring the native grasslands would impact carbon fluxes in the area.
“This grant empowers the Coeur d’Alene Tribe to further its commitment to protecting and restoring its lands and waters in the face of climate change. By integrating the Tribe’s millennia of relationship to this landscape with contemporary restoration techniques, we hope to not just protect the existing remnants of this critically endangered ecosystem but scale up the restoration of biodiversity on the landscape,” said Laura Laumatia, Coeur d’Alene Tribe Environment Programs Manager.
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