Mattole Resilience, Education, and Research Center

The Mattole Field Institute and its partnerships with local community residents and organizations, the Bear River Band, Cal Poly Humboldt, and the BLM King Range National Conservation Area were the inspiration for creating the Mattole Resilience, Education, and Research Center.

Currently in a planning and pre-acquisition phase, MRC staff are working to acquire acreage in the lower Mattole Valley that will allow us to meet the many resilience needs recently defined by local community stakeholders.

The Mattole Resilience, Education, and Research Center aims for relevance to the hopes and concerns of today’s local residents. Not every local resident embraces the concept of change, but many share concerns for the future of the area: its natural environment, its human communities, and the economies and cultures that spring from both. There is broad local agreement that, if change is to happen, change needs to embody reverence for the land, honoring this specific rural place that is the Mattole Valley. It is an implicit and hereby explicitly stated goal that the Mattole Resilience, Education, and Research Center will strive to respect and honor the land throughout its development and all of its future programming. Click here to download the Mattole Resilience, Education, and Research Center Feasibility Study.

With strong multidirectional commitments to collaboration, and under the leadership of staff at the Mattole Restoration Council who seek to prioritize collaboration and community support, the Mattole Resilience, Education, and Research Center can easily achieve the following goals:

Conservation of Habitat and Open Space

Increase Public Access, Recreation, and Trails

Collaborative Field-based Research and Education

Collaborative Economic Development/Workforce Development

Increase Coastal Community and Climate Resilience

Taken together, these 5 goals pull together and address nearly all of the needs recently identified within the local community and our collaborative partners.

Equally important, however, is HOW we will do this work.

Informed by the stakeholder engagement processes carried out in 2022-2023, the Mattole Restoration Council will seek to implement the above goals through processes that embody:

Interdependency

Diversity and inclusivity

Connecting with Indigenous communities

Elder care, support, and integration

Learning from the past

Health including mental health, health of place

And in response to a sentiment expressed during the closing of a public meeting held in Petrolia in February of 2023, which appeared to bring consensus among all those present, we will strive to achieve these goals while always “honoring the land.”

Reach out to Flora@mattole.org if you have questions concerning the Mattole Resilience, Education and Research Center.