Anthropogenic Prairies in Olympic National Park
The west side of the Olympic Peninsula is rainforest country, receiving upwards of 150 inches of rainfall per year. Lush forests of Douglas-fir, western red cedar, Sitka spruce and the western hemlock dominate. Yet there are remnant prairies on northwestern coast of the Olympic Peninsula near Ozette, in some of the rainiest reaches.
The Ozette Prairies are being rapidly invaded by conifers today, so we know trees will grow there (and vigorously, too). The question arises: how did the Ozette Prairies come to be there in the first place? Why aren’t they covered by lush rainforests like so much of the region?
The answer to those questions may be found in a wonderful new study, The Ozette Prairies of Olympic National Park: Their Former Indigenous Uses and Management by M. Kat Anderson [here].
Dr. Anderson, of the NRCS National Plant Data Center at U.C. Davis, is the much admired (and cited) author of Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources [here] as well as numerous other works of ethno-ecology. Her forte is the study of native plants, their historical uses, and the methods indigenous residents used to perpetuate those plants. Contrary to some modern myths, Indians planted, tilled, pruned, and especially burned to manage desirable plants and animals.
The Ozette Prairies are bog, fen, and grasslands surrounded by forests of Sitka spruce, western hemlock, and western redcedar. They are 2 to 4 kilometers from the the Pacific Ocean, in the rain and fog belt. Lightning is rare, lightning fires even rarer. Yet the Ozette Prairies have persisted for millennia — at least 2,000 years and perhaps as much as 12,000 — ever since the ice retreated at the end of the Wisconsin Glaciation.
Based on her research of botany, plant ecology, oral histories, and the written record, Dr. Anderson builds a strong case that anthropogenic (human-set) fire was the principal tool used by the Makah people and other tribes to maintain the prairies.
To understand more fully how the Ozette people used fire to maintain the Ozette Prairies, it is necessary to examine their reasons for doing so.
Improve game habitat. Indian burning of the open habitat fostered three inter-related goals related to the hunting of game animals: it facilitated hunting by increasing visibility and access to animals; it lured the animals to the open areas to congregate by encouraging the growth of new lush vegetation; and it maximized the quality and quantity of food available to these animals. …
Enhance productivity of below-ground food plants. Bracken fern rhizomes were a staple in the diet of all the tribes on the Olympic Peninsula, and we know that the Makah and the Ozette people gathered them as well. Bracken fern patches in the Ozette Prairies were burned and cultivated for edible rhizomes, as well as for fiddleheads for food and medicines and fronds for cleaning and serving fish. …
Enhance productivity of above-ground food plants. Some Makah have distinct memories of Ts’oo-yuhs Prairie on the Makah reservation being burned specifically to enhance production of both Indian tea and the many types of berries that grow there (see Appendix 5). According to Melissa Peterson, Makah, “people who owned the marshes burned the marshes for the cranberry for the health of the plant to increase yield and also to keep other invasive plants from taking over” (pers. comm. 2007). Pat Boachup (Makah, pers. comm. 2002) agrees: “People burned in the cranberry marsh [Ts’oo-yuhs] to promote a better crop of cranberries and Indian tea.” …
Keep the wetlands open. Native people on the Olympic Peninsula valued wetlands specifically for their open, treeless nature. As open habitats, wetlands served as corridors for easy travel, offered sites for temporary camps, and created landscape diversity in a land otherwise swathed in forest. The Makah were well aware that these environments would disappear unless they were burned, and consultants have often couched the reasons for burning in terms of maintaining the openness of wetlands. …
As is the case with other works by M. Kat Anderson, The Ozette Prairies of Olympic National Park: Their Former Indigenous Uses and Management is delightful reading. Her writing style is scholarly yet engaging. The oral histories contain story-telling features, the photographs are warm and personal, and an aura of neighborliness pervades the report.
Excellent reports by Linda Kunze, Elizabeth Colson, and Jay Powell in the Appendix add more evidence and analysis in support of Indian stewardship of the prairies.
Using fire to aid restoration of the prairies is discussed. Restoration means more than recovering plant communities, however. It also means restoring the human-nature connections that created and maintained these heritage prairies for thousands of years.
The Ozette Prairies are an example of places where rich biodiversity, beauty, and human use all co-existed for centuries or millennia. The Ozette people belonged to the Ozette Prairies, and so even now, more than 100 years after the establishment of the Ozette and Makah Reservations, the wetlands can help us understand how it is possible for humans to fit within nature.
W.I.S.E. is fortunate, honored, and grateful to be able to bring you this important report hot off the presses. The Ozette Prairies of Olympic National Park: Their Former Indigenous Uses and Management by M. Kat Anderson is [here]. Please enjoy.
by John Marker
Mike, you continue to present gems like Anderson’s paper. My fanatasy is that once we get the mission of the national forests straightened out all of the national forest management people, even those with strings of degrees, would be required to attend seminars where information similar to Ms Anderson’s would be taught, and also the skills needed today to live and work effectively in forest communities.