Chalamali (also known as Andrew Reasoner Wildlife Preserve) is a 293-acre, privately owned property in Lane County, with a 151-acre conservation zone comprising mixed oak woodlands, oak savanna, prairie, and a 142-acre forestry management zone. Since acquiring the property in 2004, the landowner’s family has worked with restoration partners to improve and maintain the oak and prairie habitats. Legacy trees, greater than 200 years old, dot the property including incense cedar, ponderosa pine, and white and black oaks. Prairie acres and meadow openings in woodlands support native herbaceous species, including rare species shaggy horkelia and Hitchcock’s blue-eyed grass, and less common species Lemmon’s needlegrass, prairie junegrass, rosy plectritis, spring gold, California fescue, Tolmie’s cats ear lily, barestem lomatium, yampah, tarweeds, and more. This special place is home to many conservation species, including chipping sparrow, pileated woodpecker, yellow-breasted chat, western bluebird, western gray squirrel, and western rattlesnake.
With funding support from OWEB and NRCS, the Council has coordinated 110 acres of thinning Douglas fir and small-diameter hardwoods to restore oak woodlands, and mixed oak, valley pine, incense cedar, and madrone woodlands. In addition to this structural restoration work, we’ve seeded disturbed areas with native grass and forb mixes, and managed invasive species.
The Traditional Ecological Inquiry Program began in 2017, and Chalamali is the program’s main outdoor classroom. TEIP youth interns, their families, educators, and community partners take care of Chalamali through ecocultural restoration. Examples include planting and tending camas, madia, calochortus, removing blackberry around hazel plants, gathering hazel shoots for weaving, and burning small areas of accumulated thatch and planting native grass and forb seeds. Ecocultural restoration activities at Chalamali benefit both people and place, foster intergenerational transfer of knowledge and learning, and build intertribal relationships.
In the fall of 2021. The Long Tom Watershed Council, EcoStudies Institute, Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Fire crew, and local fire partners hosted an Indigenous Fire Practitioners Training with local Indigenous community members from diverse tribal affiliations at Chalamali. This training provided the elements of the NWCG basic FFT2 training, and expanded upon it to include cultural and ecological burning considerations, culminating in two prairie and woodland units being burned. Relationships built from these practice burns have led to more projects and initiatives to support Indigenous-led fire initiatives, including more good fire at Chalamali.
See KLCC’s story on the Indigenous Fire Practitioners Training