Mattole Resilience, Education, and Research Center
Help our community-based nonprofit obtain a beautifully restored 1908 home for the Mattole Resilience, Education, and Research Center.
Help us raise funds for the Mattole Resilience, Education, and Research Center!
The Mattole Restoration Council will soon acquire 83 acres of land in the heart of the Lower Mattole Valley community of Petrolia. On this site we aim to create the Mattole Resilience, Education and Research Center, which will work towards addressing these 5 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 Climate and Coastal Community Resilience (as defined by our community!)
Major thanks to our funding partner, CA State Coastal Conservancy, for their support.
We now have another incredible opportunity: to obtain a beautifully restored 1908 home directly adjacent to this land. This incredible work of architectural art will serve as phase 1 of the Mattole Resilience, Education, and Research Center, and allow us to repurpose existing structures, thus minimizing our ecological footprint on the land.
Please stay tuned for upcoming opportunities to help us achieve our fundraising goal, so that together, we can turn this dream into a reality.
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.
MRC recently brought in a total of $1.3 million in California state funding for the Mattole Resilience, Education and Research Center. The broad goal of this project is to create lasting economic, ecological, and sociocultural resilience in our rural watershed community. The Mattole Resilience, Education, and Research Center will do so by conserving open space for public use, hosting collaborative field-based education, research, and workforce development to deepen understanding, appreciation for, and conservation of our watershed and the adjacent Lost Coast’s outstanding natural features and biodiversity.
The two recent awards include $800k from the CA State Coastal Conservancy to acquire 83 acres – including riparian areas along the Mattole River mainstem as well as the Lower North Fork Mattole River – for public access, field-based education and research. You can read SCC press release to learn more details about our projects and others in Humboldt County as well as across the state.
The Mattole Restoration Council was also awarded $498,000 from the CA Strategic Growth Council for collaborative planning on the land that will support the Mattole Resilience, Education and Research Center. The CA Strategic Growth Council press release indicates that MRC’s grant ranked 2nd in the state in a large pool of competitors.
We will soon begin bringing together a massive team of partners to complete this collaborative planning work over the next 2 years. Formal partners in our Community Stakeholder Structure include the Mattole Unified School District, Mattole Valley Community Center, Petrolia Fire Protection District, Mattole Salmon Group, and Mattole Valley Resource Center.
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 view 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.