Applied Ethnobiology, Advocacy and the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe of Death Valley, California

In the 1990s, the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe began a struggle for land within and surrounding Death Valley National Park. This was capped by passage of the Timbisha Shoshone Homelands Act in 2000.  It granted the Tribe trust lands and the right to co-manage additional lands held by the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management. Applied ethnobiology was used during the negotiations to document the extent and uses of Timbisha traditional lands through ethnobotanical/ethnozoological, TREM and place name studies. The Tribe then initiated a pilot project to bring TREM back to their lands through a honey mesquite and pinyon pine management project, designed to demonstrate to the agencies the value of traditional care. The project was in place for two years when complications arose that could not be easily resolved. The case study outlines some of these, and how they contributed to an overall outcome.