Wilderness and Political Ecology: Aboriginal Influences and the Original State of Nature
Kay, Charles E., and Randy T. Simmons, eds. Wilderness and Political Ecology: Aboriginal Influences and the Original State of Nature. 2002. University of Utah Press
Selected Excepts:
Preface — CHARLES E. KAY AND RANDY T. SIMMONS
Most environmental laws and regulations, such as the Wilderness Act, the Park Service Organic Act, and the Endangered Species Act, assume a certain fundamental state of nature, as does all environmental philosophy, at least in the United States (Keller and Turek 1998, Krech 1999; Spence 1999; Burnham zooo). Included in these core beliefs is the view that the Americas were a wilderness untouched by the hand of man until discovered by Columbus and that this wilderness teemed with untold numbers of bison (Bison bison), passenger pigeons (Ectopistes migratorius), and other wildlife, until despoiled by Europeans. In this caricature of the pristine state of the Americas, native people are seldom mentioned (Sluyter 2001), or if they are, it is usually assumed that they were either poor, primitive, starving savages, who were too few in number to have had any significant impact on the natural state of American ecosystems (Forman 2001), or that they were “ecologically noble savages” and original conservationists, who were too wise to defile their idyllic “Garden of Eden” (Krech 1999). As Park Service biologist Thomas Birkedal (1993:228) noted, “The role of prehistoric humans in the history of park ecosystems is rarely factored into … the equation. If acknowledged at all, [the] former inhabitants are … relegated to what one cultural anthropologist … calls the ‘Native Americans as squirrels’ niche: they are perhaps curious critters, but of little consequence in the serious scheme of nature.”
This view of native people, and the “natural” state of pre-European America, though, is not scientifically correct. Moreover, we suggest that it is also racist (Sluyter 2001). In fact, as Bowden (1992), Pratt (1992), and others have documented, the original concept of America as wilderness was invented, in part, by our forefathers to justify the theft of aboriginal lands and the genocide that befell America’s original owners. Even those who view native people as conservationists are guilty of what historian Richard White (1995:175) describes as “an act of immense condensation. For in a modern world defined by change, whites are portrayed as the only beings who make a difference. [Environmentalists may be] … pious toward Indian peoples, but [they] don’t take them seriously [for they] don’t credit [native people] with the capacity to make changes.”
Contrary to this prevailing paradigm, the following chapters demonstrate that native people were originally more numerous than once thought, that native people were generally not conservationists-as conservation is not an evolutionary stable strategy unless the resource is economical to defend, and that native people in no way, shape, or form were preservationists, as that term applies today (Berkes 1999:91; Smith and Wishnie 2000; Sluyter 2001). Instead, native people took an active part in managing their environment. Moreover, changes wrought by native people were so pervasive that their anthropogenic, managed environment was thought to be the “natural” state of the American ecosystem (Buckner 2000). In short, the Americas, as first seen by Europeans, had not been created by God, but instead those landscapes had largely been crafted by native peoples (Hallam 1975) …
Prehistoric Extinctions: In the Shadow of Man — PAUL S. MARTIN
Evolutionary Theory, Conservation, and Human Environmental Impact — MICHAEL S. ALVARD
Pre-Columbian Human Impact on California Vertebrates: Evidence from Old Bones and Implications for Wilderness Policy — JACK M. BROUGHTON
The early explorers of California struggled to find superlatives that would describe the spectacular densities of large vertebrates they encountered. On landing just north of San Francisco Bay in 1579, Sir Francis Drake was struck by the bountiful land and the vast herds of “fat deer”: “a goodly country and fruitful soil, stored with many blessings fit for the use of man: infinite was the company of very large fat deer, which there we saw by the thousands as we supposed in a herd” (quoted in Bourne 1653). Similarly, in 1602 Sebastian Vizcaino (1891) reported an abundance of deer “larger than cows” in the Monterey area. Drake’s and Vizcaino’s “fat deer” were, almost surely, tule elk (Cervus elaphus nannodes), which were later observed in abundance by others. During the 1830s, Wilkes (1845:113), for example, was overwhelmed by the abundance of artiodactyls in the Central Valley: “The variety of game in this country almost exceeds belief. The elk may be said to predominate.” Pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) and black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) were extremely abundant here as well. As one explorer noted, “At times we saw bands of elk, deer, and antelope in such numbers that they actually darkened the plains for miles, and looked in the distance like great herds of cattle” (Bosqui 1904). George C. Yount was also deeply impressed by the game he encountered near the San Francisco Bay area in the 1830s: “The deer, antelope and noble elk… were numerous beyond all parallel. In herds of many hundreds, they might be met, so tame that they would hardly move to open the way for the traveler to pass” (Camp 1923:52) …
However, the spectacular densities of tame terrestrial and marine vertebrates reported during the early historic period may, in fact, be a very poor analog for prey populations during truly prehistoric times. If Drake, Wilkes, Yount, and the other early chroniclers and settlers were preceded by waves of infectious disease and human population declines (Dobyns 1983; Ramenofsky 1987; Reff 1991; Erlandson and Bartoy 1995; Preston 1996; but see also Kroeber 1925; Cook 1976; Kealhofer 1996)-perhaps initiated first by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo’s 1542 exploration of southern California-the hoards of tame wildlife they encountered may have resulted from the earlier decimation of their chief predators, that is, the California Indians (Broughton 1994a, 1995, 1997, 1999; Preston 1997). In fact, this point was even suggested by some of the early explorers themselves. As Yount noted on his 1833 visit to the San Francisco Bay area, for example, “The rivers were literally crowded with salmon, which, since the pestilence had swept away the Indians, no one disturbed” (Camp 1923; emphasis added).
Testing this vertebrate rebound argument requires not only historic period accounts of fish and game superabundances in California, but physical evidence of large game depletion and scarcity in prehistoric times. That evidence can only be found in the bones and teeth recovered from archaeological sites-the preserved remains of prehistoric hunting activities. In this chapter, I examine several of the best documented archaeological studies that have provided evidence for late Holocene human impacts on prehistoric faunas in California.
This analysis shows that the distributions and abundances of late prehistoric vertebrates in California were fundamentally anthropogenic. The nature of late Holocene human impacts on prehistoric faunas also has implications for Pleistocene overkill (Martin 1967, 1984, 1990a, 1990b)-a hypothesis from which management policy issues have recently been generated. Finally, the analysis has implications for the role of “benchmarks” in wilderness policy issues …
Depletion of Prehistoric Pinniped Populations along the California and Oregon Coasts: Were Humans the Cause? — WILLIAM R. HILDEBRANDT AND TERRY L. JONES
Post-Columbian Wildlife Irruptions in California:Implications for Cultural and Environmental Understanding — WILLIAM L. PRESTON
The fabulous abundance of wildlife documented for California during the later stages of the Colonial period (here defined as 1769-1848) is generally interpreted as a reasonable analog of the state’s traditional zoological setting prior to the establishment of the first mission in 1769. Diverse and fertile physical environments are acknowledged as the principle underpinnings of this faunal bounty. Moreover, Native Californians are thought to have possessed a balanced relationship with wildlife that was sustained by human respect, mutual accommodation, and spiritual empathy. Indeed, the first significant depletion of game is widely regarded as having begun with the arrival of colonial settlers in 1769. These assumptions have, in turn, deeply conditioned modern interpretations of Native Californian cultures, colonial history, and contemporary wild lands management.
It is the contention of this chapter that the wildlife and the associated human and habitat interrelationships that were observed during the late Colonial period were anything but endemic and were, instead, aberrations rather than mirrors of pre-Columbian conditions in California. This false colonial menagerie commenced prior to missionization and was the consequence of an infusion of alien influences that destabilized a traditional predator-prey relationship dominated by native peoples. When this relationship was disrupted and progressively destroyed, biological settings experienced explosive perturbations. One of these was an irruption of game to numerical and spatial proportions probably unknown in the state since the termination of the Pleistocene Epoch. Eventually, these unnatural conditions became the paradigm for interpreting California’s colonial and precolonial heritage …
The Role of Prehistoric Peoples in Shaping Ecosystems in the Eastern United States: Implications for Restoration Ecology and Wilderness Management — THOMAS W. NEUMANN
Pre-Columbian human populations in the eastern United States extensively altered the physical and ecological world in which they lived. While there are many examples of this, perhaps the most significant in terms of forest and wildlife management involves the alterations in wildlife populations and forest cover that attended aboriginal subsistence practices. Prehistoric and early historic peoples in the region represented keystone predators whose hunting served as much, if not more, to reduce the competition they faced from those prey for plant foods, as it did to capture prey. The hunting pattern was not a sustained harvest strategy, at least in the way that we understand the term. The unrelenting competitive pressure exerted by aboriginal peoples over 4,000 years, combined with a hunting strategy biased toward the reproductive core of competing wildlife populations, resulted in an ecological world unlike any currently extant in the forests or wildlife refuges in the eastern United States.
A built-in issue in the context of restoration ecology is to what state will the particular ecological system be restored? Restoration ecology has implicit assumptions about what a “natural” ecological system is (Noss 1991), and has explicit propositions about the internal dynamics of that system (Cairns 1991, Callicott 1991), as least within the United States. A natural ecological system is by definition one that is free of major human interaction (Wilderness Act of 1964, cited by Noss 1991:86; see Noss 1991; Berger 1991). This is a consequence of how English is structured, which has artificial as an antonym for natural; all languages classify reality for their users. One can be wild and free, or one can be tame and restrained.
Restoration ecology is a policy design (see Caldwell 1991). It can be argued that policy is an exercise in applied history, its effectiveness depending upon the accuracy of the history from which the policy is derived. To extrapolate from Cairns (1991:186, 188, 191), any pursuit of wilderness policy, conservation biology, or restoration ecology in the eastern United States requires knowing what existed at the time of European contact before a decision is made about what is to be restored. More succinctly, to what past state will the system be restored? …
In the end, the separation of people from active participation in the forest ecosystems of the eastern United States will result in an artificial ecological construct, not a restored ecology. Janzen (1998) used the term “gardenification,” although he was thinking more in terms of a world lacking humans but otherwise managed. Berger (1991:195), citing Bonnicksen (1989), aptly stated that, “the historical ecological condition of a biotic community must be used as a model on which goals for its restoration are based. Otherwise, [Bonnicksen] noted, we are engaged in ‘creative ecology,’ not restoration.”
There never was a time from the middle Holocene on that people were not full participants in that system, and were not major agents in the structure of the ecological community. The extent of impact can be gauged in ordinal terms and it was at times overwhelming. Implicit in any restoration ecology is that something has been lost that must be restored; implicit in any reconstructive biology is that something no longer exists that at one time existed. Exclusion of a participating human population in the publicly regulated forests of the eastern United States will not restore a lost ecology. Rather, it creates a new and artificial ecology. It does not present wildlife populations with a “natural” world, in the sense of what was normal for the past 4,000 years. Instead, it results in kept populations …
Aboriginal Use of Fire: Are There Any “Natural” Plant Communities? — GERALD W. WILLIAMS
Evidence for the purposeful use of fire by American Indians (also termed Native Americans, Indigenous People, and First Nations/People) in many ecosystems has been easy to document but difficult to substantiate. Commonly, many people, even researchers and ecologists, discount the fact that American Indians greatly changed the ecosystems for their use and survival. Scientists often attribute old fire scars found in tree rings to “natural” causes, such as lightning rather than anthropogenic causes (Kilgore 1985; Pyne 1995a). However, there is a growing literature that many of the so-called “natural” fires were intentionally set. A knowledge of the Indian use of fire will help understand how ecosystem conditions today have been shaped by humans in the past. The implications of restoring fire to ecosystems for management of millions of acres of federal lands are profound.
The following accounts of aboriginal burning of ecosystems focuses on he Pacific Northwest, where some of the best documentation on the native se of fire exists (see Appendix C). For other parts of North America, see the excellent studies by Henry Lewis (1982, 1985) on the forest areas of Canada, as well as articles by Emily Russell (1983, 1997) and Gordon Whitney (1994) for the East (especially the Northeast), and William McClain and Sherrie Elzinga (1994) for the Midwest region of the United States. Stephen Pyne’s (1982, 1995a) books contain information on aboriginal people and their use of fire in North America, as well as other parts of the world.
For well over 100 years there was the idea that nature could only be “natural” when left on its own. Massive landscape changes, such as caused by hurricanes or volcanoes, or even small changes like landslides caused by heavy rainfall, would, if left alone, recover to the natural “order” of nature, undisturbed, peaceful, with harmony restored. In this view, nature is wonder, filling the human body and soul with beauty and spirit of the grand works of God. George Perkins Marsh, in his classic book Man and Nature, set the tone for much of the conservation movement of the late nineteenth century and the environmental movement of the mid to late twentieth century as he wrote about the stability and resiliency of nature- “Nature, left undisturbed, so fashions her territory as to give it almost unchanging permanence of form, outline and proportion, except when shattered by geologic convulsions; and in these comparatively rare cases of derangement, she sets herself at once to repair the superficial damage and to restore, as nearly as practicable, the former aspect of her dominion” (Marsh 1864:29).
The last few decades, however, have seen significant changes in the ecological basis for defining nature, as well as wilderness “untrammeled by Man” (Botkin 1990). Where for almost a century, ecologists and environmentalists have viewed ecosystems as in perfect harmony with climax vegetation everywhere before the European settlers came to North America: “Early ecologists recognized the presence of disturbance but focused on the principle that the land continued to move toward a stable or equilibrium condition. Through the years, however, scientists have acknowledged that equilibrium conditions are largely the exception and disturbance is generally the rule. Natural forces have affected and defined landscapes throughout time” (Federal Wildland Policy 1995:1).
Human activities have also influenced and changed ecosystems. Researchers today tend to believe that the concepts of “nature,” “natural,” and “wilderness” are human constructs and that people have been part of ecosystems since before recorded time. People, in this contemporary notion, are part of ecosystems, have evolved with ecosystems, have used parts and pieces of ecosystems for survival, and have changed portions of ecosystems for their needs-”No forests [shrublands or grasslands] are unaffected; humans have been a part of the ecosystem over the past ten centuries of major climatic change, so that all forests have developed under some kind of human influence, although its intensity has varied greatly over time and space. This influence must be accounted for as an important part of any study of forest structure and dynamics” (Russell 1997:129) …
Dennis Martinez (1998:13) noted that, “The North America that European peoples invaded and settled was not a ‘virgin’ land undisturbed by people. There was no ‘pristine wilderness’ here. Prairie and forest were to a large extent the creation of indigenous peoples. The main justification by Europeans for genocide-that land was not used to its productive potential by its Native inhabitants-was false.”…
Indian-type fire is intensive land management where not every area is treated at the same time or in the same way. Federal land managers and the public need a shared vision of the future. It will not be easy, it will not have everyone in agreement, and it will be expensive. Jim Saveland (1995:18) concluded his 1995 article with the following, which still has application-”And perhaps it is time to once again steal fire from the mountain gods and through a great relay, bring fire and the message of disturbance ecology back to the modern-day people of the world. And perhaps one day, the Phoenix will replace smokey bear as the defacto symbol of the Forest Service.”
APPENDIX A. DOCUMENTED PURPOSES OR REASONS FOR INDIAN BURNING
As noted earlier, documentation for the aboriginal use of fire is sometimes inconsistent with many writers not taking the time to ferret out the original sources, identify the particular tribes, time of year for burning, or even the purposes for which they burned. This has led many researchers to conclude incorrectly that lightning, not humans, caused all the “natural” fire scars that have been observed in many parts of North America. In other cases, the evidence is very strong and convincing. One such study, actually a film, was produced by Henry T. Lewis. The 33-minute-long film entitled “Fires of Spring” documents the First Nations people of northern Alberta, Canada, in their traditional use of fire in ecosystems, as well as their contemporary use of fire. Keeping large areas of forest and mountains free of undergrowth and small trees was just one of many reasons for using fire in ecosystems. What follows is a summary of eleven documented purposes or reasons for changing ecosystems through intentional burning by American Indians.
This activity has greatly modified landscapes across the continent in many subtle ways that have often been interpreted as “natural” by the early explorers, trappers, and settlers. Even many research scientists who study presettlement forest and savannah fire evidence tend to attribute most prehistoric fires as being caused by lightning (natural) rather than by humans. This problem arises because there was no systematic recordkeeping of these fire events. Thus the interaction of people and ecosystems is down played or ignored, which often leads to the conclusion that people are a problem in “natural” ecosystems rather than the primary force in their development. Henry T. Lewis, who has authored more books and articles on this subject than anyone else, concluded that there were at least 70 different reasons for the Indians firing the vegetation (Lewis 1973). Other writers have listed fewer numbers of reasons, using different categories (Russell 1983; Kay 1994a; Whitney 1994). In summary, I have identified eleven major reasons for American Indian ecosystem burning, which are derived from more than 300 studies (Williams 1999). Interestingly, many of the reasons listed below for burning by American Indians are the same as those for modern times (Ffolliott et al. 1996). For modern reasons see Appendix B.
Hunting. The burning of large areas was useful to divert big game (deer, elk, bison) into small unburned areas for easier hunting and provide open prairies/meadows (rather than brush and tall trees) where animals (including ducks and geese) like to dine on fresh, new grass sprouts. Fire was also used to drive game into impoundments, narrow chutes, into rivers or lakes, or over cliffs where the animals could be killed easily. Some tribes used a surround or circle fire to force rabbits and game into small areas. The Seminoles even practiced hunting alligators with fire. Torches were used to spot deer and attract fish. Smoke was used to drive/dislodge raccoons and bears from hiding.
Crop management. Burning was used to harvest crops, especially tarweed, yucca, greens, and grass seed collection. In addition, fire was used to prevent abandoned fields from growing over and to clear areas for planting corn and tobacco. There is one report of fire being used to bring rain (overcome drought). Clearing ground of grass and brush was used to facilitate the gathering of acorns. Fire was used to roast mescal and obtain salt from grasses.
Insect collection. Some tribes used a “fire surround” to collect and roast crickets, grasshoppers, pandora moths in pine forests, and collect honey from bees.
Pest management. Burning was sometimes used to reduce insects (black flies and mosquitoes) and rodents, as well as kill mistletoe that invaded mesquite and oak trees and kill the tree moss favored by deer (thus forcing them to the valleys). Fire was also used to kill poisonous snakes.
Improve growth and yields. Fire was often used to improve grass for big game grazing (deer, elk, antelope, bison), horse pasturage, camas reproduction, seed plants, berry plants (especially raspberries, strawberries, and huckleberries), and tobacco.
Fireproof areas. Some indications exist that fire was used to protect certain medicine plants by clearing an area around the plants, as well as to fireproof areas, especially around settlements, from destructive wildfires. Fire was also used to keep prairies open from encroaching shrubs and trees.
Warfare and signaling. Use of fire to deprive the enemy of hiding places in tall grasses and underbrush in the woods for defense, as well as using fire for offensive reasons or to escape from their enemies. Smoke signals, actually large fires rather than the movie version of using blankets and smoke, were used to alert tribes about possible enemies or in gathering forces to combat enemies.
Economic extortion. Some tribes also used fire for a “scorched-earth” policy to deprive settlers and fur traders from easy access to big game and thus benefitting from being “middlemen” in supplying pemmican and jerky.
Clearing areas for travel. Fires were sometimes started to clear trails for travel through areas that were overgrown with grass or brush. Burned areas helped with providing better visibility through forests and brush lands for hunting and warfare purposes.
Felling trees. Fire was used to fell trees by boring two intersecting holes into the trunk, then dropping burning charcoal in one hole, allowing the smoke to exit from the other. This method was also used by early settlers. Another way to kill trees was to surround the base with fire, allowing the bark or the trunk to burn, causing the tree to die (much like girdling) and eventually topple over. Fire was also used to kill trees so that it could later be used for dry kindling (willows) and firewood (aspen).
Clearing riparian areas. Fire was commonly used to clear brush from riparian areas and marshes for new grasses and tree sprouts (to benefit heave; muskrats, moose, and waterfowl).
Are Ecosystems Structured from the Top-Down or Bottom-Up? A New Look at an Old Debate — CHARLES E. KAY
Estes (1995, 1996) recently discussed whether ecosystems are structured from the top-down, predator-driven, or from the bottom-up, food- or resource-limited. This debate has a long history in ecology (Hairston et al. 1960; Hunter and Price 1992) and its solution is critical if we are to implement ecosystem management, especially in national parks and other protected areas (Estes 1996). Many marine and freshwater aquatic systems appear to be under top-down control, but there is less evidence that predators have a similar effect in terrestrial systems (Estes 1995, 1996). Earlier studies, however, omitted any serious discussion of Native Americans (e.g., Byers 1997), who, I suggest were the ultimate keystone predator (Mills et al. 1993; Power et al. 1996) that structured North American ecosystems ca. 12,000 B. P. to ca. 1870, especially in the western U.S. and Canada where I have conducted most of my research. My views challenge the conventional belief that native peoples were unimportant or that they were conservationists, as regards wildlife populations (Arcese and Sinclair 1997; Vale 1998; Forman 2001). Moreover, I suggest that through practices like aboriginal burning, Native Americans were the ultimate keystone species who created the very ecosystems that we now consider “natural” (Kay 2000) …
Aboriginal Overkill
Carnivore predation (Estes 1995, 1996; Kay 1996a) and native hunting are two factors that could once have limited ungulate numbers. The presence of aboriginal buffer zones, however, indicates that predation by wolves and other carnivores was not the primary factor limiting pre-Columbian ungulate populations (Martin and Szuter 1999) …
In addition, the age of their respective kills indicates that Native Americans were more efficient predators than wolves. The more difficult it is for a predator to capture a particular prey, the more that predator will take substandard individuals and young (Temple T987; Kunkel 1997). So, if two or more predators are preying upon the same species, the least efficient predator will tend to kill fewer prime-age animals (Okarma 1984). Whereas wolves and other carnivores kill primarily young-of-the-year and old animals, Native Americans killed mostly prime-age ungulates (Stiner 1990).
Since ungulates recovered from intermountain archaeological sites invariably exhibit mortality profiles dominated by prime-age animals (Kay 1994a, 1995a, 1997f), Native Americans were more efficient predators than wolves or other carnivores (Stiner 1990; see Fig. 8.5). Killing mostly prime-age animals, though, runs contrary to any maximum sustained-yield strategy (Hastings 1983, 1984) and suggests that Native Americans had a major impact on pre-Columbian ungulate populations, especially when one considers that Native Americans also killed a disproportionate number of females-a preference that runs counter to any conservation strategy (Kay 1994a, 1995a, 1997f) …
Instead, all native hunters are essentially opportunistic and tend to take high-ranking ungulates regardless of the size of the prey populations or the likelihood of those animals becoming extinct (Alvard 1993b, 1994, 1995a; Broughton 1994a, 1994b, 1995, 1997). Native Americans had no concept of maximum sustained yield (Berkes 1999:90) and did not manage ungulate populations to produce the greatest offtake. In addition, human hunting and predation by carnivores are generally additive and work in concert to reduce ungulate numbers (Walters et al. 1981; Kunkel 1997; see Fig. 8.6). Moreover, competition from carnivores tended to negate any possible ungulate conservation practices (Kay 1994a, 1995a, 1996b, 1997f). Because Native Americans could prey-switch between trophic levels to small animals, plant foods, and fish, they could take their preferred ungulate prey to low levels or extinction without having an adverse effect on human populations. In fact, once Native Americans killed off most of the ungulates, human populations actually rose (Hawkes 1991, 1992, 1993) …
Aboriginal Burning
Native Americans also had a major impact on ecosystems by repeatedly burning the vegetation (Boyd 1999; Bonnicksen 2000; Kay 2000). They did this to modify plant and animal communities for human benefit and to increase productivity (Pyne 1995b). In California, for instance, native peoples had 70 reasons for burning the vegetation (Lewis 1973), and even in northern Canada, where the vegetation is less diverse, Native Americans still set fires for at least 17 different reasons (Lewis and Ferguson 1988). While aboriginal burning has been widely reported in the anthropological literature (e.g., Lewis 1985; Boyd 1986; Turner 1991, Pyne 1993, 1995b; Gottesfeld 1994), those findings have largely been ignored by ecologists (Kay I995a; Buckner 2000).
Determining how fires started, though, is critical because “fires set by hunter-gatherers differ from [lightning] fires in terms of seasonality, frequency, intensity, and ignition patterns” (Lewis 1985:75). The majority of aboriginal fires were set in the spring, between snowmelt and vegetation greenup, or late in the fall when burning conditions were not as severe (Pyne 1995b). Unlike lightning fires, which tend to be infrequent and of high intensity, native burning produced a high frequency of low intensity fires. Thus, aboriginal burning and lightning fires created different vegetation mosaics, and in many instances, entirely different plant communities (Anderson 1993; Blackburn and Anderson 1993). Moreover, aboriginal burning reduced or eliminated the number of high intensity, lightning-generated fires (Reid 1987:34; Pyne 1993, 1995b). Once aboriginal fires opened up the vegetation, then subsequent lightning fires behaved like those set by Native Americans (Pyne 1993, 1995b) …
Management Implications
Whether ecosystems are structured from the top-down or the bottom-up is more than a theoretical debate for it will determine how we manage the Earth’s resources, especially in preserves and other protected areas (Diamond 1992a; Estes 1996). Most national parks, wilderness areas, and nature reserves, for instance, are supposedly managed to represent the conditions that existed in pre-Columbian times; i.e., so-called natural or pristine conditions (Arcese and Sinclair 1997; Keller and Turek 1998; Spence 1999; Burnham 2000). But what is natural? If Native Americans determined the structure of entire plant and animal communities by firing the vegetation and limiting ungulate numbers, among other activities, then that is a completely different situation than we have today (Martinez 1993; Wagner and Kay 1993; Kay 1997b, 1997c; White et al. 1998; McCann 1999). Thus, a hands-off or “natural-regulation” approach by modern land managers will not duplicate the ecological conditions under which those communities developed (Wagner et al. 1995).
Native Americans were not only the ultimate keystone predator but also the ultimate keystone species whose removal has altered North American ecosystems, even in protected areas. Unless the importance of aboriginal land management is recognized and modern management practices changed accordingly, our ecosystems will continue to lose the biological diversity and ecological integrity they once had. For as Aldo Leopold noted over 40 years ago, “if we are serious about restoring (or maintaining) ecosystem health and ecological integrity, then we must first know what the land was like to begin with” (Covington and Moore 1994). Native Americans owned, used, and modified nearly all of the New World for at least 12,000 years and to dismiss those people as having had little effect on their environment (Arcese and Sinclair 1997; Vale 1998; Foreman 2001) is in White’s (1995:175) words an act of “immense condescension.”
How might these concepts apply to park management? Under the Treaties of 1851 (Kappler 1904:594-596) and 1868 (Kappler 1904:1008-1011) various native people already claim hunting rights in Yellowstone National Park (Spence 1999). Thus, one way to reduce overgrazing in that park (Wagner et al. 1995) would be to honor the U.S.’s previous commitment to Yellowstone’s original owners, and to once again allow them to hunt in the park and surrounding areas (Czech 1995; Kay 1997a). After all, native people successfully managed Yellowstone and other North American ecosystems for at least the last 10,000 years, and while they were not conservationists as that term is commonly used, by keeping ungulate populations low, Native Americans actually promoted biodiversity, which, after all, is the hallmark of a keystone predator (Mills et al. 1993; Power et al. 1996). Aboriginal burning will similarly have to be reinstated if communities are to retain their ecological integrity (Kay and White 1995; White et al. 1998; Kay et al. 1999; Kay 2000). And finally, it must be remembered that allowing nature to take its course under present conditions (Arcese and Sinclair 1997; Foreman 2001), so-called “natural regulation” or “hands-off” management, is really a value judgment and a decision that has wide-ranging consequences (Wagner et al. 1995) because areas that today are structured from the bottom-up are entirely different from the ecosystems that were historically and prehistorically structured from the top-down (Wagner and Kay 1993) …
Afterword: False Gods, Ecological Myths, and Biological Reality — CHARLES E. KAY
The authors of this edited volume are in general agreement that native people had a significant impact on their environment, but Broughton (Chapter 3) and Martin (Chapter 1) apparently do not agree on why the Pleistocene megafauna went extinct. While Martin attributes their demise to overkill by America’s original discoverers, Broughton has reservations. Broughton, moreover, is not alone in his criticism of Martin’s Pleistocene Overkill hypothesis (Pielou 1991:251-266). At least three major objections have been raised to the idea that Paleoindians killed-off the American megafauna. First, critics point out that there are few documented aboriginal kill sites relative to the presumed megafauna population. In New Zealand, for example, where most scientists agree that humans killed-off the moas, there is archaeological evidence that thousands upon thousands of moas were killed and eaten by early Polynesian hunters (Anderson 1984, 1989b; Cassels 1984; Trotter and McCulloch 1984; Holdaway and Jacomb 2000). Yet in the Americas, there are but a handful of mammoth (Mammuthus spp.) and mastodon (Mammut spp.) sites with spear points embedded in the animals (Pielou 1991:251-266, Stuart 1991). Simply put, if Paleoindians killed-off the American megafauna, why are there not more documented kill sites?
Second, the available evidence indicates that there were relatively few Paleoindians (Pielou 1991)-there certainly were not the human population densities that occurred later. Thus, critics of Pleistocene Overkill wonder how so few people could have killed-off so many megafauna. And third, there are many megafauna species that went extinct for which there is no evidence of aboriginal hunting; i.e., there are no known kill sites for many megafauna species (Pielou 1991; Stuart 1997). There is also a fourth, though usually not stated objection to Martin’s hypothesis-how could humans kill such large animals with such “primitive” technology? After all, Paleoindians had only spears and atlatls and the megafauna were huge, and presumably very dangerous. It is my contention, however, that these objections to Pleistocene Overkill appear valid only because all participants in this debate, and I do mean all participants, even Paul Martin who has studied this subject the longest, have made a fundamental biological error.
Although not explicitly addressed by Martin, he and virtually everyone else, who have studied this subject, have assumed that America’s megafauna were food-limited. That is, they assumed that predators had no significant effect on herbivore populations, and thus the herbivores were exceedingly numerous. Artistic renditions of the American Pleistocene invariably depict a landscape teeming with large numbers of megafauna species. These depictions, however, are little more than “Garden of Eden” mythology. Instead, as I explained in Chapter 8, the American megafauna were predator-limited, not food-limited (Geist 1989, 1998) …
Elsewhere, I have explained how predators limit ungulate populations (Kay i996), and as shown in Table 9.1, predators have a significant effect on prey densities. In the case of caribou (Rangifer spp.), wolves (Canis lupis) and bears (Ursus spp.) can decrease the herbivore’s density by more than two orders of magnitude. That is, carnivore predation alone can reduce caribou population densities to only 1 percent, or less, of what the habitat is capable of supporting. While across northern Canada and Alaska, wolves and bears commonly keep moose (Alces alces) populations at only 10 percent, or less, of habitat carrying capacity (Kay 1996, and references therein; Bergerud and Elliott 1998). Thus, if American Pleistocene herbivores were predator-limited, as Geist (1989, 1998) and I contend, then there may have been only 1-10 percent of the megafauna populations generally assumed by others …
Given the above, what would happen when a super-predator, Paleoindian, entered the scene? Figure 9.1 is the graph of predator-prey interactions in Alaska that was discussed in Chapter 8. First, it is important to recall that initially the moose population was kept well below habitat carrying capacity by the combined action of wolves and grizzly bears, and that predation had a similar, though smaller effect on Dall sheep (Ovis dalli). Second, note that only a few moose hunters are involved, and that there are relatively few moose killed by humans-archaeologically there would be few moose kill sites. Next, note that the hunters never kill a single Dall sheep-archaeologically there would be no Dall sheep kill sites. Finally, note how the addition of a small amount of human predation on one species, moose, caused the entire system to collapse. This is called a cascading trophic effect-where the addition of one factor, in this case human hunting, causes the entire system to change. This is similar to what I believe happened when aboriginal people first entered the New World …
Figure 9.2 depicts the cascading trophic effect that I believe occurred when Paleoindian hunters entered an already predator-limited ecosystem. Moreover, this model accounts for all the major objections to the standard Pleistocene Overkill hypothesis. First, very few Paleoindians are required. Second, there are relatively few megafauna kill sites, and third, even if Paleoindians focused on only a few especially large prey, that was enough to trigger a cascade effect where other megafauna were decimated by Pleistocene predators …
In North and South America, however, once humans pushed the system beyond a threshold, Pleistocene carnivores did most of the actual killing. By cascading down the list of available prey species, Pleistocene carnivores were able to take species after species to low levels, which Paleoindians and the few remaining carnivores then hunted to extinction, as per the optimal foraging models discussed in this volume. Bergerud and Elliott (1998) reported a similar cascading trophic effect in northern British Columbia where wolves took species after species to very low levels. As Fisher (1996) and Ward (1997) have explained, there certainly is no evidence that the Pleistocene megafauna died out due to a lack of food, as is required by all climatic change models (see Chapters 1 and 
…
In addition to the materials reviewed by Williams in Chapter 7, there are several ecological data sets that suggest aboriginal burning once accounted for most fires in the West, as well as in eastern forests. Brown et al. (1994), for instance, compared the U.S. Forest Service’s Prescribed Natural Fire Program with pre-European settlement fires in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area along the Montana-Idaho border. Based on stand-age analyses and fire-history maps, Brown et al. (1994) were able to determine how frequently various forest types burned in the past and then they compared those data with how frequently the same vegetation types burned from 1979-1990 when lightning-caused fires were allowed to run their course. Brown et al. (1994) reported that, on average, the area burned during pre-European times was nearly twice as great as the area burned by lightning fires alone today. Moreover, low-elevation montane areas that once had the highest fire frequency, now seldom burn. Since the overall climate has not changed significantly, it is unlikely that lightning-caused fires burn less area today than they did in the past. Instead, it is likely that there are fewer fires today because native people no longer fire the land like they once did …
An even more compelling piece of evidence is the species composition changes that have occurred in eastern forests since European colonization (Bonnicksen 2000). For the last 3,000-4,000 years, or longer, much of the eastern United States was dominated by oak (Quercus spp.), American chestnut (Castanea dentate), and pines (Pinus spp.), all fire-tolerant, early successional species (Myers and Peroni 1983; Delcourt et al. 1986, 1998; Clark and Royall 1995; Cowell 1995, 1998; Olson 1996; Delcourt and Delcourt I997, 1998, 2000; Bratton and Meier 1998; Hamel and Buckner 1998; Bonnicksen 2000). Since European contact, however, oaks and pines have been replaced by late-successional, fire-sensitive species, such as maples (Acer spp.) (Botkin 1990:51-71; Abrams 1998; Bonnicksen 2000). That is to say, the species composition of many eastern forests had been maintained for thousands of years by frequent fires-fires, as we have seen, which could only have been set by native people. It is equally clear that aboriginal burning created the many eastern prairies and “barrens” reported by early Europeans (Campbell et al. 1991; Belue 1996; Barden 1997; Bonnicksen 2000). Canebrakes (Arundinaria gigantean), too, likely owed their existence to native burning and other aboriginal land management practices (Platt and Brantley 1997). Today, eastern canebrakes are an endangered vegetation type (Platt and Brantley 1997)-all because land managers continue to deny the importance of aboriginal burning (Boyd 1999).
POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS
After years of study and internal debate, I have come to the conclusion that “wilderness” must be purged from our legal system and the American psyche. Not only am I opposed to the “creation” of any more officially designated wilderness, but all existing wilderness areas should be deauthorized, and the Wilderness Act repealed, because it is racist legislation. By permitting this deception to continue, not only do we ignore the genocide of the past, but we allow it to color our ongoing treatment of America’s original owners. This does not mean that the bulldozers should be turned loose, but that we need to seriously rethink man’s role in nature…
To do otherwise will only lead to the ecological destruction of the very areas society is trying to protect (Buckner 2000; Yibarbuk et al. 2001)…
Almost all environmental activists have enthusiastically supported the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone (Kay 1996). Claims that wolves need to be restored, though, because “every species that was in the park when white men first came to the region is still there, except one [the wolf]” (Dawidoff 1992:40) are racist in character, as are similar claims about restoring the wolf as the system’s top predator. Native Americans were the ultimate keystone predator, not wolves, and native people once structured Yellowstone and other ecosystems (Kay 1998; Kay et al. 1999). If we really want to restore Yellowstone’s preeminent predator, then the public should be lobbying for the return of the park to Native Americans. Instead, by inference, they denigrate native people by assuming they were irrelevant, or worse, that they were America’s original conservationists (Keller and Turek 1998; Spence 1999; Burnham 2000; Foreman 2001). While calling native people conservationists may appear to be the only kind thing people of European, Asian, or African ancestry have ever had to say about aboriginal people, in reality it only serves to hide the genocide that befell America’s original owners (Spence 1999; Sluyter 2001). Moreover, the fact that native people were generally not conservationists actually strengthens aboriginal land claims. By modifying the land, they clearly established ownership even by European standards-and make no mistake about it, all the land was owned and occupied prior to the events set in motion by Columbus (Keller and Turek 1998; Krech 1999; Redman 1999; Spence 1999; Thornton 1999; Whelan 1999; Burnham 2000).
