As part of its annual Sustainability Week celebration, Eastern Washington University hosted a daylong conference devoted to exploring some of the most pressing environmental issues facing our way of life.

“Sovereignty Through Sustainability” addressed critical topics such as drought and climate change, water law, salmon runs, Tribal history and culture, food sovereignty and natural resources restoration.

The conference included a cross-section of experts such as tribal leaders, scientists, planners, historians, economists, attorneys from state agencies, decision-makers and our own amazing EWU Faculty.

“Our efforts will work to protect Mother Earth and our students will be better prepared to protect our environment,” says Margo Hill, EWU associate professor of Urban and Regional Planning and one of the organizers of the event. “We have done our job.”

Speakers included:

• President David May, Opening Remarks
• Elder- Carol Evans, Chair, Spokane Tribe of Indians – Prayer, Land Acknowledgement
• Empero Corral, Spokane-Shoshone Bannock, Song

Historical Salmon Runs, Water Quality and Salmon Restoration

• Warren Seyler, Former Tribal Chair Spokane Tribe of Indians, Tribal Historian
• Dr. Al Scholz, EWU Biology, Historical fisheries before Grand Coulee Dam blocked runs
• Dr. Brent Nichols, Spokane Tribe Fisheries and Water Resource Division Director
• DR Michel, Columbia River Treaty, or Dr. Michael Marchand, Colville Tribe

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Impacts of Climate Change

• Jerry White Jr., RiverKeepers, Spokane River, drought response plan
• Don Sampson, Umatilla Executive Director, ATNI Climate Change – Checking calendar ATNI Climate change
• Dr. Lauren Stachowiak, Forestry, Wildfire ecology and climate change
• Dr. Stephen Tsikalas, Climate Science, the general science of climate change

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The Collaborative Road Map to Washington’s Future

• Joe Tovar – WA Bills,1717 GMA (Passed), Salmon (failed), Climate change (Gov. desk)

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Tribal, State and Local Water Rights and Responsibilities

• Mary Verner, Former Spokane Mayor, lead for Washington State Department of Ecology Water Resources Program, (she is heading up an effort to bring state, local and tribal governments together to reexamine state water laws).
• Rick Eichstaedt, Growth Management Hearings Board – Discuss Hirst Water law decision PDF of Hirst Water Law Decision
• Maia Bellon, former Director WA Ecology

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Natural Resource Damages/Superfund Panel

• Dr. Fred Kirshner, Sovereignty through Superfund
• Patrick Jones – Spokane Indicators – Environmental Quality data
• Dr. Germán Izón – Professor and Chair, EWU Economics Department, Ecosystem Services
• Caj Matheson, Director of Natural Resource, Coeur d’Alene Tribe, Pilcher property

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Restoration Ecology and Tribal Food Sovereignty

• Dr. Melodi Wynne, (Spokane Tribe of Indians) –  Community and Cultural Psychology, Spokane Tribal Network’s Tribal Food Sovereignty project
• Dr. Robin O’Quinn, Biology at EWU, Environmental Science faculty
• Dr. Rebecca Brown – Biology at EWU, plant ecology or restoration ecology and food sovereignty.  The EWU prairie restoration project.

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EWU’s progress on the Palouse Prairie Restoration Project is highlighted in the Inlander.

A team of EWU biology students and faculty members recently achieved a significant milestone in Eastern’s ongoing Prairie Restoration Project.

Working earlier this fall, the group drill-seeded four different treatments of high-density and low-density mixtures of seeds and forbs to cover the full extent of the project’s 13-acre test area, a patch of former wheat field just west of the EWU soccer facility. The mixes include a biodiverse array of plants that are native to the Northern Palouse prairie. The test area is now completely planted and carefully labeled for accurate evaluation.

The new cultivations also encompass a 1.5-acre plot that was hand planted last winter. That initial planting was intended to cover the entire test site, but heavy rains oversaturated the site’s clay-laden soil, making it impossible to move trucks and other machinery around the site.

Rather than lose a growing season, students and faculty hand-planted a smaller portion of the test plot. Unfortunately, the heavy rain soon yielded to drought, a circumstance that meant the seeding wasn’t as successful as hoped. But the planting did manage to propagate some native grasses – a result that led restoration team members to conclude that, going forward, they could safely assume such grasses would be easier to establish than flowering plants.

In addition, the initial 1.5-acre planting continues to yield educational benefits. Because it can take up to four years for native seeds to germinate and develop sustainable root structures and shoots, students are continually gaining insights from this living laboratory.

Ultimately, restoration-related research will serve as an important tool in helping EWU students, scientists and conservation experts dig deeper into the fascinating complexities of the Palouse Prairie ecosystem. It’s an outcome, project team members say, that will significantly advance our understanding and appreciation of this vital regional landscape. View photos here.

EWU’s Geology Field Camp, a capstone requirement that allows budding geologists to demonstrate what they’ve learned in the real world, was reinvented this summer in order to keep students healthy and safe.

Because the typical field camp requires interstate travel and shared lodging, universities across the nation cancelled their camps due to COVID concerns. Chad Pritchard, chair of EWU’s geosciences, wasn’t ready to pull the plug on Eastern’s annual event. Pritchard and his team put in long hours to create a 4-week camp that eliminated risky travel and adhered to best-practices for social distancing, all while providing 22 students with invaluable experiences in surveying, mapping, sample collection, analysis, reporting and more.

While previous EWU camps involved a trip to Dillon, Montana, this year’s camp was held closer to home. Instead of mapping bedrock in Dillion, students mountain biked, hiked and climbed to reach remote and less-accessible locations around the region, Pritchard says. Staying local also had the benefit of allowing other EWU organizations to pitch in to help. For a mapping project on Bonnie Lake, a lovely lowland body of water just south of the Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge, EWU’s EPIC Adventures provided canoes to help. EPIC also provided transportation to Tower Mountain on the Cascade Crest and Spokane County’s historic Silver Hill Mine.

Additional projects included students using drones and legwork to map 200 acres of land recently acquired by the City of Cheney for wastewater treatment lagoons. They afterwards presented a submitted report for faculty feedback.

“It was a professional-level report and they presented it really well,” Pritchard says.

Because EWU was among “only a handful of colleges” offering a camp, Pritchard allowed for eight seniors from Central Washington University and two additional students from universities in New York and Kentucky to be included along with the EWU students.

Other 2021 EWU Geology Field Camp highlights included:

• Mapping the Saltese Uplands Conservation Area and Beacon Hill Trail for an ongoing project in cooperation with Spokane County Parks and the Bureau of Land Management. The project is slated for completion in 2024.
• Mapping the Fish Lake Trail, and using the findings to create brochures and 3D models to track groundwater flow and hypothetical contamination.
• Collecting and analyzing soil samples for EWU’s Prairie Restoration Project (with the Cheney Fire Department generously providing water to help with the infiltration testing). The work established baselines that will be crucial to the success of future plantings.

EWU’s progress on the Palouse Prairie Restoration Project is highlighted in the Spokesman-Review.

As the country celebrates Earth Day 2021, Eastern Washington University is excited to launch the next phase of an innovative sustainability effort underway on the Cheney campus. The Prairie Restoration Project will transform 120 acres of university owned land back to its native “Palouse” habitat.

In the days before development and agriculture, the patch of northern Palouse that EWU calls home was part of a magnificent prairie landscape, one that for millennia sustained countless generations of Native peoples. Today almost nothing of the original Palouse prairie remains. Now, in an effort to better serve Eastern students and faculty, as well as the greater community, EWU is embarking on a project to restore the land.

The university is in the midst of a critical, second phase which involves a multi-disciplinary team of faculty, students and staff managing a 1.5-acre plot of lot. The site has been seeded with a biodiverse array of grasses and forbs that once grew in the area. The team is now conducting research to see how the seeds take hold, so the entire project site can be seeded as well.

“This is going to be transformative because our campus is going to have this pretty large area with native biodiversity representing prairie that is becoming pretty rare in this region,” says Rebecca Brown, PhD, EWU professor and chair of the Biology Department. “People can come and see the views and move around through these awesome Palouse hills. I think it’s going to be wonderful.”

Brown points out that some of the best learning at Eastern happens beyond the brick and mortar. The Prairie Restoration Project will create outdoor classrooms, a living laboratory for student research and other hands-on learning experiences. Developed in cooperation with representatives from area Native communities, EWU will create a model for boosting regional biodiversity and provide educational and recreational spaces connecting visitors to a long-lost landscape.

This major university initiative will impact the community for years to come by preserving natural land and providing educational exploration in the following ways:

• Education: The Prairie Restoration Project will expand learning opportunities for students and visitors to campus. The space will inspire outdoor exploration, connections to natural environments, and help develop a strong sense of place.
• Inspiration: With proper education, we hope community members will be inspired to plant native plants in their yards to create their own “pocket prairies.” This simple, actionable step allows supporters to create immediate benefits that will continue for generations.
• Research: Converting the site from wheat cultivation to native grasslands will create many new opportunities for faculty and student research. The living laboratory will provide new opportunities that mimic more real-world situations and prepare students for careers.
• Connection: Many of the plants in the ecosystem are culturally significant to Native Americans for food, medicine, art materials and more. The project will provide renewed access and educational collaboration with local tribes.
• Recreation: A multi-use trail system will provide access to the restoration site and encourage exploration, recreation, and lead visitors to stunning 360-degree views of the region. The community can use the trails to walk, run, mountain bike, cross country ski and observe nature.
• Biodiversity: More than 120 plant species will attract and retain more pollinators in the region and supply nutritional seeds for birds and other small animals. The vast root systems will hold soil in place, reducing the risk of erosion, and draw water down deep into the soil to recharge the groundwater supply.

Please visit Eastern’s new immersive, story-telling website ewu.edu/prairie to explore the work Eastern students and faculty members have already done to prepare and seed the first plots on the site. We also invite you to learn more about how the dramatic environmental impacts this project will have in our community for generations to come.