With local lumber mills shutting down, Robert Kenning, an instructor at a tribal college in western Montana, and the tribe’s forestry director came up with an idea.

The usual products generated by forests on the Flathead Indian Reservation were not selling well, the victims of market forces. But what about looking at logging scraps and the smaller trees? Could this “woody biomass” be turned into chips or pellets for sale as an alternative energy source? Would the forests yield enough to make the effort worthwhile?

Kenning, an instructor of forestry and geographic information systems at Salish Kootenai College in Pablo, Mont., landed a $200,000 grant in 2010 from the Department of Agriculture to explore this possibility.

Kenning’s research project and others conducted by tribal colleges drew lively interest when presented at the annual First Americans Land-grant Consortium, or FALCON, conference held in Denver in late October.

Some participants, however, wondered whether such research would thrive in coming years—or even survive, for that matter. The tribal colleges receive research grants from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Department of Energy and other agencies. But their main source, by far, is the USDA, and those dollars could dry up.

The House of Representatives has approved cutbacks that would, among other things, eliminate USDA research grants to tribal colleges. A Senate appropriations bill retains the research funding. Those and other issues were expected to be taken up in a conference committee some time before a stopgap federal budget expired in mid-November.

In these tough budgetary times, the tribal colleges need to do a better job of publicizing their role and achievements, and next year’s FALCON conference will focus on how to do that, officials say. Training will be offered on putting out press releases and media kits and generating letters to editors, according to Dr. John Phillips, FALCON’s executive director.