Updated Oct. 21, 2026: This story now includes responses from the Salmon River Restoration Council and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and corrects Lyra Cressey’s title. She is the council’s associate director, not its interim executive director.
In the steep Salmon River country of western Siskiyou County, a group of Native elders who trace their ancestry to the Konomihu people say they have been shut out of the restoration work being done on their home river. On Oct. 16 they asked, in a press release published by Siskiyou News, to be consulted on those projects from the start.
“We want to be consulted following AB 52 guidelines,” said Shasta Konomihu Elder Tina Bennett, who is also fire chief of the Salmon River Fire Department. “And not at the last minute, when their earthmoving equipment is already destroying culturally significant riverside sites.”
Their request raises a question that matters just as much to the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe and other tribes without federal recognition in the Bay Area: when such a tribe asks for a seat at the table, what does California law actually require? For restoration projects, the answer is often nothing.
What the elders are asking for
According to the release, tens of millions of dollars in restoration projects led by the Salmon River Restoration Council, a nonprofit based in Sawyers Bar, have targeted coho salmon and steelhead habitat in partnership with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the U.S. Forest Service. The elders say their requests for project data have gone unanswered or been met “in fragmented form at the last minute,” and that their traditional ecological knowledge has been left out of planning.
“We have never been anti-science,” said Brooks O’Connor-Cone, secretary of the Salmon River/Konomihu Shasta group. “We have repeatedly requested project data, but no one is sharing any data with us that demonstrates positive impacts on the salmon population.”
The group opposes installing fish passage barriers on the North and South Forks of the river. It argues that the river is overburdened with gravel and sediment from historic mining and from the 2013, 2020 and 2025 fires, and that the priority should be relieving that load and enlarging pools at creek mouths as cold-water refuges. “We want to see restoration projects prove themselves by demonstrating that more native fish and lamprey are returning to spawn,” said Elder Kathy O’Connor.
The release also disputes the council’s description of the federally recognized Karuk Tribe as the watershed’s original inhabitants, pointing to 19th-century ethnographers who mapped the area as Konomihu. The Muwekma Times is not taking a position on that history. We have asked the Karuk Tribe and the council to respond, and will add their answers.
What AB 52 does, and doesn’t, require
AB 52, the 2014 law that brought tribal consultation into the California Environmental Quality Act, is not limited to federally recognized tribes. It defines a “California Native American tribe” as one on the contact list kept by the Native American Heritage Commission, a list that includes tribes like the Muwekma Ohlone. But the duty to consult is narrower than many people assume.
Under Public Resources Code section 21080.3.1, a lead agency must begin consultation “prior to the release of a negative declaration, mitigated negative declaration, or environmental impact report,” and only if the tribe has first asked that agency in writing to be notified of projects in its area, and then responds in writing within 30 days of a notice. Consultation is tied to those environmental documents. If a project is exempt from CEQA, no such document is ever prepared, and AB 52’s consultation duty is never triggered.
The duty also runs to public agencies, not to nonprofits. A restoration group can choose to talk with local Native people, but the legal obligation sits with whichever state or local agency approves or carries out the project.
The restoration fast track
Many restoration projects in California now skip CEQA review entirely. In 2021, the Legislature passed SB 155, which added the Statutory Exemption for Restoration Projects, known as SERP, at section 21080.56. A project that exclusively restores or protects habitat for native fish and wildlife qualifies if the director of Fish and Wildlife concurs. In 2024, SB 174 extended the exemption to Jan. 1, 2030.
The statute says nothing about tribes. Fish and Wildlife’s guidance “encourages and supports lead agency efforts to meet and confer with local advocacy groups, neighbors, affected public agencies, elected officials, and California Native American tribes prior to submitting a SERP request,” but that is a recommendation, not a requirement. The department’s list of approved projects includes restoration work in Santa Cruz County, within the Ohlone homeland, as well as in Humboldt, Ventura, Tulare and Los Angeles counties.
The Legislature knows how to write tribal consultation into a CEQA exemption when it wants to. When it created a CEQA exemption for urban infill housing in 2025 (AB 130), it required cities to send a formal invitation to consult to every tribe traditionally and culturally affiliated with the site, give tribes 60 days to accept, and make tribal monitoring and avoidance of tribal cultural resources binding conditions of approval unless the tribe agrees otherwise. That provision, at section 21080.66, uses AB 52’s definition of a tribe, so it reaches tribes on the commission’s list whether or not they are federally recognized. There is no comparable provision in the restoration exemption.
None of the Salmon River council’s projects has used SERP, according to both the council and Fish and Wildlife. “To date, no SERP concurrences have been requested or issued for projects in the Salmon River watershed,” wrote Matt Wells, chief of the department’s Watershed Restoration Grants Branch. Statewide, he said, 105 have been issued. (See “What the council and the state said,” below.)
The federal side is narrower still
Projects on the Klamath National Forest fall under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. There, tribes without federal recognition have no right to consult at all. They take part only if an agency invites them, or agrees to their request, as an “additional consulting party.” As we reported Monday, a Senate permitting bill and a pending rewrite of the Section 106 rules could shrink even that.
The state ballot adds another layer. Proposition 45, on the Nov. 3 ballot, would limit AB 52 consultation on “essential projects” to federally recognized tribes. The Yes on 45 campaign lists wildfire prevention among the project types it would speed up.
Why this reaches the Bay Area
The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe has lived this gap for years. In a May 14, 2018 letter about a project at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, the agency told the Tribe that “no Federally Recognized Tribes are associated with this location,” while inviting it to participate as a consulting party. The Tribe’s ability to use AB 52 depends on its place on the heritage commission’s contact list, and the commission is now rewriting the rules for that list in a way that would require tribes without federal recognition to reapply. Its next public session on the related Sacred Lands File rules is Wednesday, Oct. 21, from 4 to 6 p.m.
Restoration money is flowing into Ohlone territory too, from creek and wetland work to cultural burns. Unless a lead agency chooses to reach out, a Bay Area restoration project using SERP can go forward without any notice to the tribes whose ancestors lived there.
What the council and the state said
After this story first ran, the Salmon River Restoration Council sent a detailed response. “We strongly disagree with the characterization that SRRC has refused to provide requested project information,” wrote Lyra Cressey, the council’s associate director. “To our knowledge, we have not declined to provide information in response to any request we have received.” She said staff have met with the elders “on multiple occasions, holding numerous meetings and project site visits,” and that the council has begun “including tribal members with ties to the Salmon River in our project planning efforts.” Some delays, she wrote, come when requests go to partner agencies rather than to the council.
Cressey said all of the council’s restoration projects so far have been on National Forest land, with the U.S. Forest Service as lead agency under federal environmental law. Only one current project has completed state CEQA review. It is funded through Fish and Wildlife’s Fisheries Restoration Grant Program and was reviewed under a mitigated negative declaration, not the SERP exemption. For later projects, she said, the funding or approving state agency is expected to serve as CEQA lead agency. “SRRC does not conduct formal government-to-government tribal consultation, nor are we responsible for AB52 consultation,” she wrote. “These responsibilities rest with the public agencies.”
On the dispute over the watershed’s first peoples, the council pointed to its website, which says, “The Karuk, Shasta, and Konomihu Tribes all inhabited the area.” “Recognizing the Karuk Tribe’s relationship with the watershed does not diminish the historical and current connections of the Shasta, Konomihu, or other Native peoples to the area,” Cressey wrote.
Fish and Wildlife’s Wells confirmed that the SERP statute “does not require lead agencies to follow CEQA’s AB 52 procedures.” But the department “requests CEQA lead agencies considering using SERP to engage meaningfully and respectfully with all interested California Native American Tribes and to document that engagement,” he wrote, and that request includes “tribes that are not federally recognized.”
That is a welcome policy. It is also only a request. For the Muwekma Ohlone and other tribes without federal recognition, a request is not the same as a right that a lead agency must honor.
Who we asked
Before publishing, the Muwekma Times emailed the Salmon River Restoration Council’s associate director, Lyra Cressey; the Karuk Tribe; the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Cutting the Green Tape program, which handles SERP concurrences; the Native American Heritage Commission; and the Klamath National Forest. We asked each about the elders’ request, how consultation works on these projects, and whether SERP has been used in the watershed. The council and Fish and Wildlife responded on Oct. 20, after publication; their answers appear above. The Karuk Tribe, the Heritage Commission and the Klamath National Forest had not responded as of Oct. 21. We will update this story if they do.
We could not find a public email address or phone number for the Shasta Konomihu group. This story relies on its press release as published by Siskiyou News. We invite the elders to contact us at times@muwekma.org.
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