Elk are again roaming on lands that California has returned to the Tule River Indian Tribe

In the scrub-brush foothills between the long flat fields of the San Joaquin Valley and the mighty peaks and sequoia forests of the Sierra Nevada, state leaders and elders from the Tule River Indian Tribe gathered Wednesday to mark the return of 17,000 acres of ancestral land to the tribe.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office called it “the largest ancestral land return in the history of the region and a major step in addressing historical wrongs against California Native American tribes.”

The former cattle ranches, one known as the Hershey Ranch and the other as the Carothers Ranch, include grasslands, oak woodlands and dark evergreen forests. They sit just south of the 55,000-acre Tule River reservation and abut the Giant Sequoia National Monument. They were purchased in 2024 and 2025 with support of private funders, the Conservation Fund and the California Natural Resources Agency’s Tribal Nature-Based Solutions Program, which uses state bond funds to return ancestral lands to tribes.

Trailers carrying Tule elk arrive at the Tule River Indian Reservation in Tulare County during a collaborative effort to release elk onto the reservation on Oct. 22.

(Travis VanZant / California Department of Fish and Wildlife)

The program has awarded more than $107 million to support the return of tens of thousands of acres to California tribes, including 10,000 acres for the Hoopa Valley Tribe to acquire the headwaters of Pine Creek, a tributary of the Klamath River. The initiative is part of a state plan to conserve 30% of California’s lands and coastal waters by 2030. It’s also part of what the governor’s office calls a “first-in-the-nation effort to address historical wrongs committed” against Native American tribes.

The Tule River acquisition restores some of the tribe’s sacred homeland and will enable a host of conservation projects, including protecting the Deer Creek watershed, protecting habitat for California condors and reintroducing tule elk. The tribe last year worked with state officials to reintroduce beavers to the south fork of the Tule River.

“This land return demonstrates the very essence of tribal land restoration, which expands access to essential food and medicinal resources,” Lester R. “Shine” Nieto Jr., chairman of Tule River Tribal Council, said in a statement. Nieto added that the tribe “envisions this land located in the Yowlumne Hills as a place to gather, heal and simply be” and that it is part of the tribe’s “long history of asserting and affirming its sovereignty.”

Tule elk are released onto the Tule River Indian Reservation in Tulare County on Oct. 22.

(Travis VanZant / California Department of Fish and Wildlife)

In his statement, Newsom said that “the historical wrongs committed by the state against the Native people of this land echo through the natural worlds of California ecosystems that lost their first and best stewards.” He added that the land return celebrated Wednesday “marks a critical step in deepening the relationship between the state and the Tule River Indian Tribe.”

State officials said funds for the purchase included $7.75 million from the Tribal Nature-Based Solutions Program, $2.4 million from the California Wildlife Conservation Board and a “sizable amount” from private philanthropy. The total purchase price was not immediately available.