The Yurok’s Blue Creek Salmon Sanctuary—the largest land-back deal in California history (June 2025)—now generates $3.3 million in carbon credits for tribal stewardship activities.
March 3, 2026 – A new $9.2 million state grant program is now open for California Native American tribes, offering a direct financial pathway to purchase and reclaim ancestral lands. The 2026 Tribal Nature-Based Solutions (TNBS) Climate Bond Solicitation, funded by the voter-approved Proposition 4 climate bond, prioritizes projects that pair land return with ecological restoration. For Northern California tribes like the Yurok and Karuk, who have spent generations fighting to restore their homelands along the Klamath River, this funding represents a critical new tool, building on a historic victory last year while a key application deadline looms just weeks away.
The program, administered by the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA), was created in direct response to tribal consultations on Governor Newsom’s nature-based solutions and 30×30 conservation strategies. It is designed to fund exactly the kind of work tribes have been leading for decades: buying back pieces of their territory and healing the land through traditional stewardship.
How the New Grant Program Works
The newly opened solicitation provides competitive grants specifically for “fee title acquisitions” —meaning tribes can use the money to buy land outright. The program also funds conservation easements and water rights purchases.
Key features of this year’s grant cycle include:
- Purpose-Built Funding: Eligible projects must include an ancestral land return component paired with planning or implementation of “nature-based solutions,” such as habitat restoration, prescribed fire, watershed improvements, or tribal workforce development.
- No Match Required: There is no requirement for matching funds, although projects that have already secured partial funding from other sources will score higher.
- Minimum Award: Ancestral land return grants carry a $1 million minimum award, with no maximum beyond the total available funds.
- Escrow-Ready Track: A portion of funding is reserved for acquisitions that are ready to move quickly. These projects must enter into a grant agreement by March 31, 2027, and close escrow by July 30, 2027.
The application process involves three steps: a Preliminary Project Proposal, a Final Project Proposal, and potential site visits. Crucially, the deadline for Step 1 applications and for the “escrow-ready” track is April 15, 2026.
A Proven Model: Hoopa Valley and Hupa Mountain
This is not the first time the TNBS program has funded land return in Northern California. In December 2023, the program provided early funding through a time-sensitive process to the Hoopa Valley Tribe. That grant, in partnership with the State Coastal Conservancy and private funders, helped the Tribe acquire 10,395 acres of forested property, returning Hupa Mountain back to tribal stewardship.
The Hoopa Valley success demonstrates the model the new grant aims to replicate: a partnership between tribal leadership, state agencies, and other funders to reassemble checker boarded ownership patterns and restore Indigenous management across large landscapes.
Building on the Yurok’s Historic Blue Creek Return
The new funding also arrives just over a year after the Yurok Tribe completed the largest land-back transaction in California history. After a 23-year effort and $56 million, the tribe regained ownership of more than 47,000 acres within the Blue Creek watershed. That deal—a complex patchwork of loans, private philanthropy, federal tax credits, and revenue from California’s cap-and-trade carbon market—more than doubled the tribe’s total holdings and is now managed as the Blue Creek Salmon Sanctuary and Yurok Community Forest.
That transaction serves as a real-world model for the very type of project the new state grant is designed to support: one that links the return of land directly to its healing through both Western science and millennia of Indigenous stewardship.
“To go from when I was a kid… from being afraid to go out there to having it be back in tribal hands… is incredible,” Barry McCovey Jr., director of the Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department, told the Associated Press last year, reflecting on the Blue Creek return.
Potential for the Karuk and Broader Klamath Basin
For the Karuk Tribe, the Yurok’s northern neighbors on the Klamath River, this funding could be transformative for their ancestral territory along the middle Klamath. While the Yurok have regained a massive portion of their territory, the Karuk have also been actively pursuing land reacquisition and climate resilience projects. In 2022, the Karuk received federal funds to establish a Climate Resilience Center and expand its Tishanik Farm, demonstrating a strong commitment to integrating food sovereignty and traditional practices into land management.
The timing is particularly significant, as the largest dam removal project in U.S. history was recently completed on the Klamath, opening up hundreds of miles of salmon habitat. This restoration momentum creates an urgent opportunity for tribes to secure ownership of key parcels along the river corridor to ensure permanent protection.
Previous Successes and Program Oversight
The TNBS program has already distributed over $107 million to fund 33 projects, supporting the return of approximately 38,950 acres to tribal stewardship across California. Past grantees include the Yurok Tribe, the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation, the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians, the Maidu Summit Consortium, and the Winnemem Wintu Tribe (through Sawalmem Inc.), among many others.
The CNRA will manage the funds through standard grant agreements, and state reporting requirements will apply to all awarded projects. However, once land is acquired—either into federal trust or tribal fee ownership—tribes will exercise sovereignty over its management.
For Northern California tribes this state bond funding offers a direct line to resources needed to cement their role as permanent stewards of their ancestral homelands.
