Since its inception, the people of Black Bear Ranch have participated as members of the Salmon River/Klamath River community, making friends and establishing families in the local communities along the North and South forks of the Salmon River as well as the Klamath River. Black Bear has always been a voice for the inclusion of all voices, the equal treatment of all people, genders and races and the value of community and working together collectively.
We raised our children partly at Black Bear and partly in local one-room public schools. We provided midwifery for many children born on the Salmon River. We worked with River residents to establish a tree planting collective that provided employment for over 60 local residents during the late 1970s. We worked to protect the lands from pesticides and damaging forest practices through the Salmon river Concerned Citizens. This work expanded to challenge broader toxic issues in Siskiyou County at a wood treatment plant that was a Superfund Site in Weed. As members of Citizens Against Toxic Sprays, we successfully challenged pesticide practices along state highways and stopped spraying for over 10 years when an integrated pest management system was established by CalTrans. As part of their fight for good forest practices, members of Black Bear Ranch were instrumental in the publication of a book by Gordon Robinson on all age forest management called The Forest and the Trees. SRCC also fought to stop the eviction of local residents, many after living in their homes for generations on mining claims and special use permits. Black Bear residents also founded Salmon River Restoration Council which has been a key actor in watershed repair along the Salmon River and spawned the Mid Klamath Council doing the same along the Klamath River.
In these and other ways, members of the Black Bear community have been an important and constructive part of the community and region. At the same time, over the years, many people came to live at or visit Black Bear Ranch left to purchased land on the Klamath and Salmon Rivers. Inevitably, this, along with large government land holdings and other land privatization, has had an impact on the availability of land for local tribal members. Acknowledging this, we in the Black Bear family are working as we move forward to responsibly steward Black Bear in honor and respect of the land and the indigenous community in this beloved place.
USFS Bear Country Project
The Klamath National Forest is proposing treatments (logging, fuel removal and more) for the forest around Black Bear Ranch. This project will include forest thinning, fuel reduction and underbrush removal on Forest Service land adjoining the boundaries of Black Bear Ranch. Members of the Black Bear family have been meeting with Forest Service representatives to make sure that the lands in the area are well served by these activities. Many decades of legal appeals, demonstrations, discussions and hard work involving the Karuk tribal, local residents, Black Bear family members, local groups like the Salmon river Restoration Council and others have pressed the Klamath Forest to implement rules, regulations and practices that have greatly improved Forest Service projects, many of which now focus on supporting forest health and not simply timber extraction. The conversation between the Forest Service and the community goes on in a much more productive manner than it did in past decades. The ancient practice of the Karuk people and becoming more respected and informing modern forestry.