More than 17,000 acres around the Klamath River in Northern California, including the lower Blue Creek watershed, have returned to the Yurok Tribe, completing the largest landback deal in California history.
The Yurok people have lived, fished, and hunted along the Klamath for millennia. But when the California gold rush began, the tribe lost 90 percent of its territory.
For the last two decades, the Yurok Tribe has been working with the nonprofit Western Rivers Conservancy to get its land back. The 17,000 acres composes the final parcel of a $56 million, 47,097-acre land transfer that effectively doubles the current land holdings of the Yurok Tribe.
The tribe has already designated the land as a salmon sanctuary and community forest and plans to eventually put it into a trust and care for it in perpetuity.
“No words can describe how we feel knowing that our land is coming back to the ownership of the Yurok people,” said Joseph James, the chairman of the Yurok Tribal Council, who is from the village of Shregon on the Klamath River. “The Klamath River is our highway. It is also our food source. And it takes care of us. And so it’s our job, our inherent right, to take care of the Klamath Basin and its river.”
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