For the past fifteen years, Lomakatsi - Hopi for “life in balance” - has been working with students and citizens to restore damaged ecosystems.  Students help grow approximately 10,000 plants in five shadehouse nurseries, which they then plant at project sites.  The direct participation of public school students has been a fundamental part of Lomakatsi’s work since its genesis. 

In the late ‘80s, Marko Bey was a reforestation worker replanting the clear-cuts of the Pacific Northwest.  Planting trees was beneficial, and the agency’s objectives were focused on single-species tree plantations designed specifically for future timber harvests.  Bey was looking for a more positive way to apply his skills and a more holistic approach to healing the forest.  He became involved in efforts restoring streamside habitat for salmon populations.  In 1995, Bey and Justin Cullumbine co-founded Lomakatsi, an ecological restoration non-profit organization based in Ashland, Oregon.

Since the project started, the group has expanded from six passionate people working part time on private lands to a workforce ranging from 50 to 150 people serving six counties in Southern Oregon and Northern California.  Lomakatsi currently does 95% of its work on about 20,000 acres of public land, including stewardship agreements in two national forests.

For Bey, co-director of Lomakatsi, it’s all about the art and the science of restoration; the organization’s goal is well-researched restoration that is artfully implemented by skilled and invested workers.  This balance of art and science allows damaged ecosystems to be restored to health while providing good-paying jobs and integrity to local people.  Bey believes in a restoration philosophy that is about both people and place.  “Typically, in the high-production forestry model, everything was production based, and both the land and the people get mistreated in that setting.  It’s not just about the ecology, it’s also about the people, the social ecology.”

Though Lomakatsi engages in a variety of forest and watershed restoration projects, the group’s primary focus is on forest restoration, including oak woodlands and previously logged coniferous forests.  In Southern Oregon, successful forest restoration requires learning about fire.  Local ecosystems are fire-adapted, but a century of fire suppression has resulted in unhealthy, overcrowded forests that are full of tinder; when a wildfire does sweep through, it becomes high-intensity. Lomakatsi’s crews take a unique approach that merges fuel reduction and forest restoration, thinning the woods in a way that emulates fire.  Thinning is done in a mosaic pattern, the largest trees are left standing, and species diversity is maintained.  Small cuttings are burned in piles, and cuttings that are too large to burn (but smaller in diameter than in average logging) are sold.  This method establishes a more balanced ecosystem, provides jobs, reduces the likelihood of uncontrollable wildfires, and produces income that funds more restoration work. 

Local Native American populations have been helpful resources for understanding healthy land stewardship and the role of fire.  Lomakatsi respects, values, and utilizes the traditional ecological knowledge of the people who have lived in the area for generations.  The group is engaged with local tribes and indigenous cultural restoration professionals, with those communities represented in Lomakatsi’s advisory board.  Bey says, “These indigenous communities really know the landscape.  They’ve been living there for thousands of years and they have used fire as a land management tool. Traditional knowledge is invaluable to the ecological restoration process.  It’s a big influence for Lomakatsi.”