What's needed to get spring Chinook back to Walla Walla? Cooperation — and patience

The Nez Perce Tribe is installing solar panels on homes and community buildings across their reservation with the goal of producing enough energy to replace the hydroelectric dams on the Snake River responsible for the diminishing salmon and steelhead populations.

The Okanagan Nation Alliance leads a Fish in Schools program that donates fish spawn and the equipment to raise them to elementary and secondary schools near their territory. Thousands of fish raised by the students are released into local waterways during ceremonies at the end of the school year as a part of their efforts to bring salmon back to the area.

The Coeur d’Alene Tribe is in the middle of a multi-decade effort to restore an important wetland that will make the local environment more resilient to climate change. Using tribal knowledge and expertise, they’re encouraging beavers to return, reintroducing salmon, planting trees, and building connections between people and the land.

Native Renewables, a Native- and women-led nonprofit, is bringing free, off-grid solar energy systems to homes in the Navajo and Hopi reservations that don’t have access to power. And it’s doing so by training local Indigenous peoples to work in the industry so they can reap the economic benefits of these careers instead of hiring out the work.

The Upper Columbia United Tribes are working to reintroduce salmon along the Upper Columbia River after the Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee Dams altered the environment, preventing the salmon from returning. Their research on the impact of the dam on the river, salmon, and their culture has pressured the U.S. government to uphold its obligations to them. So far, it’s committed $200 million for the reintroduction efforts as a result.

The United States Envrionmental Protection Agency is distributing grant money to help tribes like the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in Oklahoma start and grow recycling programs, as funding is often a massive hurdle. The tribe was able to purchase equipment like a semi-truck and compactor with the funds.

Native tribes and First Nations in the Great Lakes Region are successfully reviving wild rice, a native crop that is deemed “extremely vulnerable” to climate change and lost much of its wetland habitat. The tribes’ restoration projects involve seeding lakebeds, monitoring water levels and quality, educating others on the importance of the crop, and harvesting it by hand.

Indigenous peoples across the western United States are bringing back native plants that disappeared many years ago by practicing natural regeneration. By slowly bringing ecosystems that were disrupted by human activity back to their natural state over time, the seeds and roots preserved underground are given the chance to flourish.

The SeaStore Seagrass Restoration Project in Kiel, Germany, is teaching locals to harvest and replant the underwater grasses. The project is restoring areas these plants used to inhabit because they store large amounts of carbon.

Menominee tribal members are practicing methods of forest management that blend both conservation and Indigenous culture to preserve the viability of the forest long-term. In 2018, it was found that after a century of logging on the reservation, the forest had higher tree volume, higher rates of regeneration, more plant diversity and fewer invasive species than other, nontribal forests.