Tribal Comanagement at the State Level: The Oregon Experience

Abstract

Ecological disturbances are straining conventional fish and wildlife management, which tribal knowledge can inform to produce more effective management. Although federal policy has recognized government-to-government relations with Tribal Nations, most day-today regulation of fish and wildlife runs through state agencies. This Article argues that Oregon has provided an important management framework between the state and Tribal Nations. Since 2022, Oregon has entered a series of state-tribal agreements that constitute a durable and increasingly replicable co-management framework. This Article contends that these agreements reflect a second-generation, state-driven adaptation of an earlier co-management framework that emerged from the Columbia River treaty-rights litigation. Although Oregon has not formally ceded legal primacy, the agreements nonetheless shift considerable operational authority to Tribal Nations through recurring harvest negotiation, shared scientific information, hunting and fishing licensing, and habitat coordination. Some limits to the co-management framework appear in Willamette Falls, an important historic intertribal commons, where overlapping tribal claims expose the shortcomings of bilateralism. Habitat restoration likewise tests whether Oregon's framework can apply beyond the harvest context. Consequently, the Article concludes that the Oregon-tribal agreements offer a workable but conditional framework of inter-sovereign resource management for other states and Tribal Nations, and other resources.