White Earth Nation, feds sign funding agreement to co-manage wildlife refuge in NW Minnesota
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A new agreement at Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge gives White Earth Nation a hands-on role in resource management. White Earth Nation will help manage water, wild rice beds and forests at the refuge on lands within the reservation in northwestern Minnesota under a multi-year funding agreement signed Tuesday with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The agreement takes effect July 1.
People who visit the wildlife refuge in northwestern Minnesota may not see much change.
"Visitors might not notice a whole lot of difference here, other than perhaps some conservation partners helping us here on the refuge," said Kent Sundseth, refuge manager. "Visitor use of the refuge will really remain the same as it has for decades.”
The agreement directs approximately $400,000 to the tribe, which will take on some of the work the federal government has long done at the refuge.
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White Earth Nation Chairman Michael Fairbanks tied the agreement to a broader effort to reclaim a hand in managing the tribe’s treaty-guaranteed lands. At the tribe's annual State of the Nation address in May, he pointed to the Tamarac agreement and a separate agreement with the state to co-manage the White Earth State Forest, calling both steps toward self-determination.
"This has been a good journey for us," Fairbanks said.
White Earth Nation and the Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge have a shared history. The refuge covers about 43,000 acres in Becker County, and roughly 21,000 of those acres lie within the White Earth Reservation under an 1867 treaty. The rest sits in territory just outside the reservation, covered by an 1855 treaty.
White Earth Nation holds treaty-based hunting, fishing and gathering rights reserved in those treaties, and it has held rights to ricing and trapping across the entire refuge since a 1935 agreement with federal agencies. Tamarac was established in 1938 as a haven for migratory birds.
This is the latest step in a relationship that has deepened over the past several years. The two sides signed a memorandum of agreement in 2024, followed by a co-stewardship agreement later that year. This is the first agreement to place tribal staff on the refuge doing the day-to-day work alongside federal employees.
"This will be a continuation of that [relationship], but really working hand in glove, day to day, right here on site," Sundseth said. "That's something I'm really excited about."
The agreement comes through the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, which recognizes the right of tribes with a strong connection to a federal entity to assume programs the agency provides.
White Earth Nation will help maintain young forest habitat. Staff will assist with timber harvesting and thinning pine plantations. The agreement also brings cultural content into the refuge's education programs, which Sundseth estimates reach about 900 students a year.
Sundseth said no jobs at the refuge are being cut or shifted. He said help from White Earth Nation frees federal staff to pick up other work around the refuge.
"They got great folks on their team. We have great folks on our team, and getting those folks together to work on some common conservation values that we share is really, really going to be exciting,” Sundseth said.
