USDA Announces First Alaska Tribal Conservation District

Also at last week’s Farm Forum, Agriculture Deputy Secretary Chuck Conner signed a cooperative conservation agreement establishing the first-ever Tribal Conservation District in Alaska. The agreement is  between the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Tyonek Native Corporation and the Native Village of Tyonek.

"This is an exciting development for Alaska," said State Conservationist Robert Jones of the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. "We are happy to see the development of tribal districts to manage and conserve natural resources at the local level."

By signing this agreement, the Tyonek Tribal Conservation District will become the 26th Tribal Conservation District organized by USDA. The Tyonek Tribal Conservation District joins a host of Indian tribes that have elected to form officially-recognized tribal conservation district to maintain cooperative conservation relationships with USDA.

The Tyonek Tribal Conservation District will be the first federally-designated district Alaska; the 12 existing soil and water conservation districts are state-affiliated. The 40,000-acre Tyonek Tribal Conservation District boundaries stretch from Cook Inlet on the south, just beyond Chelatna Lake on the north, east to the Susitna River and west to Rainy Pass.

Like all soil and water conservation districts, the Tyonek Tribal Conservation District will be comprised of a board of local land users and will help coordinate assistance from all available sources -- public and private, local, state and federal -- in an effort to develop locally driven solutions to natural resource concerns.