Three Drop Thursday: Navigating Communities, databases, beauty, death & hope
Friends of Confluence West -
Welcome to Three Drop Thursday, a snapshot of what we’ve been paying attention to this week. In this issue: the new Community Navigators program, a great source of environmental experts for reporters, bloggers, et al., and death, hope, and beauty.
In case you missed everything you ever wanted to know about the USFS’ new climate resilience map, avoided costs, and when to capitalize, check out the September 13 edition brought to you by our always fab stylish sheep.
For the West,
Kimery
Community Navigators – Check it out
The federal land agencies (e.g., USFS, BLM, NPS, etc.) are doing their darndest (not their forte) to link underserved communities with IRA and Infrastructure Act grants. Fortunately, two well-known NGOs have stepped up to help: Coalitions and Collaboratives (aka CoCo) and the Watershed Center have launched the USFS’s Community Navigator program. In a nutshell: The Navigator Program supports leaders in finding and accessing funding to build climate resilience (e.g., preventing and mitigating catastrophic wildfires.) First step? “Request a Navigator” – a staffer will be in touch.
Looking for more specific info on navigating the USFS’s “Fireshed” funding maze? Check out our Watersheds for Firesheds program.
Yo! Reporters, bloggers, et al
Green 2.0 is out with their updated Environmental Experts of Color Database – a very useful compendium of folks from California to WDC, Mariana Islands to Alaska. And while you’re out on their site, your org can also take the Pay Equity Pledge.
In Beauty May I Walk
Brian van der Brug/LA Times
This week is the anniversary of the death of my Dad. After backpacking and mountain climbing all over the West, he settled in Lone Pine, California, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. Living there, he sometimes wondered what the land would have looked like when the Owens (Patsiata) Valley Paiute and Shoshone peoples called it home - before the white settlers came in and before LADWP diverted the waters south.
Currently, final approval for the tribes’ proposed Patsiata Tübiji Nüümü-na Awaedu Ananisudüheina Historic District is in the hands of BLM and the NPS.
From one of the tribes’ elders: “We have a tribal story of bravery and survival against impossible odds to share with the world. And we have an inherent right to protect the true story of our history and its connection to this sacred ground and its wildlife.”
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