This year, Ecotrust introduced beekeeping to one of its forests, which, besides enhancing wild edibles and medicinal plants via pollination, will produce honey from the huckleberries and salmonberries characteristic of a young forest. Von Hagen is considering commercial strategies for mushrooms, including harvesting and marketing under Ecotrust's own label. And the fund is making an inventory of the edible plants in the forest, which include fiddlehead ferns, miner's lettuce and fir and spruce tips.
"We are collaborating with chefs," she says.
As part of Fund I, where the land is generally meant to be kept after it is purchased, Ecotrust's sale of the Sixes River Forest to the Coquilles (re-named Sek-wet-se by the tribe) was unusual. Soon after purchasing it in 2006, von Hagen reached out to the tribe to establish a relationship and explore potential collaborations around research or cultural harvesting. When the tribe let her know two years ago that it wanted to purchase this small portion of their ancestral homeland, she felt motivated to help them find federal and state New Market tax credits that allowed the fund to sell the property at market rate at the same time that it cut the tribe's cost basis by about 35 percent.
"The tribe shares our ecological goals," she said—something that was and is evident in their superb management of another forest. "It brought the property a whole level of cultural significance, and they were adding value we could not."
The tribe, meanwhile, is excited. "I don't think this could have happened without Ecotrust's support," said Brenda Meade, chairman of the Coquille Indian Tribe. "We're looking forward to hosting a blessing ceremony for this land."