Goals & Needs

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The Tribal EcoRestoration Alliance (TERA) is a nonprofit based in Lake County, CA with a mission is to cultivate land stewardship, livelihood, and leadership skills that weave collaborative relationships between Tribal members and the community at large. 

Our goals are to: 

• Connect Tribal members with meaningful livelihoods and culturally relevant work in their ancestral territories

• Build Tribal capacity to engage in ecological restoration work that mitigates the impacts of climate change

• Support Native American voices to play a central role in land stewardship

• Regenerate the ecosystems of the North Coast ranges 

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TERA hosts multiple trainings a year focused on ecocultural land stewardship, and bringing together wildfire resilience, vocational skills, and traditional knowledge. We also employ a full-time all-Native hand crew that has contracts to caretake land through the lens of ecocultural stewardship; this includes projects such as fuels reduction, invasive species removal, prescribed and cultural fire, riparian restoration, and native planting. We hope to model regenerative land stewardship that can reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire while caretaking culturally significant plants and enhancing native biodiversity.  

The Tribal Wildfire Resilience Coordinator will support TERA to build capacities in new areas, including the following: 

• Establish a comprehensive mapping program 

• Support outreach strategies to communicate our work to the wider community

• Assist in the coordination of our Prescribed & Cultural Fire and Training Exchange (TREX) program
   

A day in the life of our  Tribal Wildfire Resilience Coordinator will start with the full TERA staff at 7:30 AM to participate in a morning circle, where we offer good words, share a check-in on how we’re feeling, and then debrief on the day’s work. One day the fellow may be out mapping the regrowth of tule on the Clear Lake shore after a cultural burn; another day they may be interviewing and working with the crew to craft staff bios for our website; another day they might be organizing, inventorying and loading tools for the next prescribed burn.

 

Through supporting our restoration work, the Fellow will directly contribute to building wildfire resilience, mitigating climate change, addressing carbon sequestration, and improving soil health and biodiversity. This fellow’s work will further GrizzlyCorps' goals of cultivating fire resilience, supporting California’s bio-diverse ecosystems, and supporting initiatives that build capacity for Native communities.
 

 

Capacity Building Projects

The Tribal Wildfire Resilience Coordinator will focus on three main capacity-building projects:

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• Project Maps Database - TERA currently utilizes CalTopo and Google Earth to map and gather all data for all of our restoration and fuels projects, and are hoping to move our mapping system to GIS or QGIS to build our capacity for higher quality geospatial analysis. The development of a more effective mapping system will directly support our work and the land restoration efforts of our partner Tribes in Lake County. Outcomes would include the establishment of a navigable maps database, entry of maps in GIS, setting up software for ongoing data collection, and supporting the Project Manager in mapping projects. Developing this resource will help us better track our work over time, and more effectively tell our story with maps. Ideally the fellow would also provide some training for TERA staff or training participants on use of GIS. 

 

• Storytelling and Media Communications Strategies - TERA has a minimal presence on social media and our website is infrequently updated. We hope to bring on a fellow who is excited to support the storytelling aspects of our work, and take photos, edit short videos, create social media posts, and create content that will support getting our story out into the world and in the greater narrative around wildfire resilience, Tribal sovereignty, and Indigenous-led land stewardship. 

 

• Prescribed & Cultural Fire Coordination - This fellow will participate in the coordination of various trainings and burns, from securing smoke permits and reviewing tool inventories, to generating burn unit maps and planning day-of logistics. The coordination and planning of burns is a large part of TERA’s existing programmatic framework, and is expected to exponentially grow in 2023. By supporting this program, this fellow will directly support putting good fire on the ground in Lake County and surrounding areas. 

 

Organizational & Community Highlights

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TERA is a small, tight-knit team of individuals who wear many hats. We are a young organization still in the process of building out our systems, making the nature of our work creative, fast-paced and dynamic. Those interested in joining our team will need to be adaptable and self-motivated, ready to roll up their sleeves and create things from the ground up. Due to the wide spectrum of projects we manage, from restoring endangered fish habitat to implementing cultural burns, there will be many opportunities for learning and gaining new skills. TERA staff work closely together to carry out our work, so one can expect to be part of an intimate environment where we are often sharing feedback, providing support to one another, and celebrating each others’ successes.

Additionally, because TERA works at the intersection of workforce development, land stewardship, and Indigenous sovereignty, joining our team offers a distinctive experience. We have the privilege of working closely with our Tribal partners with whom we collaborate to develop programs that build capacity for the Tribal community. These aspects of our work make TERA a unique organization, working to support a demographic that has been historically overlooked in contemporary conservation movements. 

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We have a strong network of partners and contacts and can assist fellows with identifying long-term housing upon their acceptance to the GrizzlyCorps program as our Tribal Wildfire Resilience Coordinator

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