FORESTRY MATTERS
July 9, 2026
Dear Reader: As we enter a new and possibly more threatening wildfire season the Herald has offered me the opportunity to write a series of articles concerning the wildfire/forest management conundrum that we now face. The title of this series, “Forestry Matters” was chosen because of its double meaning: First being a discussion of forestry subjects or matters, and second, we are in dire straits, and proper forest management is required to avoid further peril. For background, I graduated from Oregon State University in Forest Management in 1968 when we still had a vibrant forest products industry. During college I spent two summers on fire crews and two with Insect and Disease Control with the U.S. Forest Service, then following a stint in the service was employed as a forester by Boise Cascade Corporation in Northeast Oregon. However, by 1980, with almost total restrictions of harvesting on federal lands, our forest products industry was reduced to a shadow of its former self. While you can take the forester out of the forest, you can’t take the forest out of the forester, and I have followed forestry matters intensely since then.
In the pieces to follow we will work our way through a number of topics but start with the history back perhaps 10,000 years ago with the Indigenous People. In the last few years, with the completion of the North American Tree Ring Fire Scar Network and several papers derived from that work we have made a quantum leap forward in understanding how the Native Americans managed their lands. Additionally, a more thorough review of the written works by the early explorers, such as George Vancouver and Joseph Whidbey, the botanical studies and records of David Douglas, the journals of Lewis and Clark, the records of the Hudson Bay Company, the records of the early railroad surveyors and the written documentation of some of the earliest non-native settlers, combined with the oral tradition of Native Americans came together to form a cohesive whole. Before we go there, however, I would like to remind you of one of Mark Twain’s sayings:
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for certain that just ain’t so.”
As with any scientific endeavor, it is essential to discard preconceived notions and base decisions on the best evidence possible, which also means throwing out those precious ideas and beliefs that have been proven to be false. When examining the history of our nation’s forest resources we will find that some of the glorious beliefs just don’t stand up when confronted with actual facts. According to this prior narrative, the forest of North America before European contact were ancient, untouched, dense and self-regulating; vast cathedrals of old growth that sustained themselves without intervention for millennia. This image has shaped conservation law, federal land management policy and public sentiment for more than a century. It has inspired genuine love of the land and motivated real conservation victories. But as a description of ecological history, it is deeply and consequentially wrong. The forests that early European explorers encountered were not wilderness in any meaningful modern sense. They were cultural landscapes; actively shaped, managed and maintained by Indigenous Peoples over thousands of years.
Additionally, common perceptions of the Indigenous Tribes generally involve notions of people who walked gentle on the land. Understanding the condition of North American forests prior to European settlement requires looking far deeper into history than the 1500–1850 period typically referenced in environmental debates. Archaeological, paleoecological, and anthropological evidence now makes it clear that Indigenous Peoples have been shaping the continent’s landscapes for at least 10,000 years, and in many regions even longer. Their influence was not marginal. It was continuous, intentional, and ecologically transformative.
Population estimates for the pre-contact era vary widely, but even conservative reconstructions show that Indigenous populations were large enough — and geographically widespread enough — to exert landscape-level influence. While the estimates for 1500 BCE range from roughly 2.1 million to 18 million, earlier periods also supported substantial populations. By 8,000–10,000 years ago, nearly all major ecological regions of North America were inhabited, from the Pacific Northwest to the Great Plains to the Eastern Woodlands.
Now, how did the Indigenous People manage the landscape to such an extent. That will be covered in the next installment. Stay tuned!
Thanks, Don Healy
Forestry matters — Part 2
Published 1:30 am Thursday, July 16, 2026
How did the Native Americans manage the lands for the past 10,000 years? The answer is, first and foremost, fire.
Indigenous Peoples were not passive inhabitants of these landscapes. They were sophisticated ecological engineers who used burning, harvesting, transplanting and other tools to maintain open, resilient and productive forests. For thousands of years prior, the forests were shaped by people who understood that fire was essential to maintaining ecological balance, wildlife abundance and food security. Initially, it was thought that Indigenous People were hunter/gathers much like our more prehistoric ancestors. While not purely agriculturalists like modern society, research has now shown that the Indigenous People were diligent managers of numerous food and material sources. Unlike today’s farmers who intensively manage a consolidated acreage for the production of one, or a few species, the Indigenous People managed the desired crops in situ and traveled to where the crops grew naturally, in many cases following a regular migration each year to fulfill their needs.
The Indigenous population had an intimate relationship with their environment, and their only significant tool to cultivate and manage the plants and animals upon which they depended was fire. Indigenous fire served dozens of functions, including:
Maintaining berry fields (huckleberry, serviceberry, salmonberry)
Enhancing root crops (camas, wapato, biscuitroot)
Improving forage for deer, elk, and bison
Maintaining spaced oak and hazelnut stands free of underbrush
Encouraging basketry plants such as beargrass and willow
Nurturing medicinals: yarrow, Oregon grape, wild ginger
Maintaining wetland plants: tule and cattail
Reducing pests and pathogens
Maintaining travel corridors and visibility
Protecting villages by reducing nearby fuels
These were not incidental benefits — they were the intended outcomes of a deliberate management system. Native Americans probably knew as much if not more about specific plant sequences in local communities, what we refer to now as plant succession, as contemporary forest and rangeland specialists. They were also fully aware that many of the plant and animal species that they relied on would disappear if they allowed normal plant succession. The oak groves they relied on for acorns would be taken over by Douglas fir, which would later be superseded by hemlock and cedar. Huckleberry patches could not exist under a dense forest canopy, so the continual use of fire was necessary to preserve an important component of their food supply. The same reasoning applies to many of the other plant species listed above.
Under Indigenous management, the old growth stands looked dramatically different than what we see today. They contained very old, large trees, but only a few per acre. The stands were open and frequently the forest floor was filled with grass that supported deer, elk and a broader animal population. The Native Americans would have likely viewed today’s old growth stands as deserts in their ability to provided food and materials.
Paleoecological records, early explorer accounts, and modern fire-scar data all converge on the same conclusion: historical forests were far more open and less dense than contemporary stands. In many regions of the West, particularly in ponderosa pine and mixed-conifer forests, tree densities were often 10-20% of current levels. Large, fire-resistant trees dominated the canopy while the understory was sparse with limited ladder fuels.
In May and June of 1792, Captain George Vancouver’s expedition entered Puget Sound expecting a wilderness populated with unsophisticated natives. Viewing the Penn Cove area on Whidby Island the following report was written:
“The surrounding country, for several miles in most points of view, presented a delightful prospect consisting chiefly of spacious meadows elegantly adorned with clumps of trees which the oak bore a very serious proportion, in size from four to six feet in circumference. In these beautiful pastures…the deer were seen playing about in great numbers. Nature had here provided the well-stocked park and wanted only the assistance of art to constitute that desirable assemblage of surface, which is so much sought in other countries, and only to be acquired by an immoderate experience in manual labor. (George Vancouver, A Voyage of Discovery in the Pacific Northwest and Round the World, 1791-1795, Vol. 2. Kaye Lamb ed. (London, 1984) pg.568.)
Next topic: Lifestyles of the Rational and Indigenous.
Don Healy lives in Lynnwood. He graduated with a B.S. Degree in Forest Management from Oregon State University in 1968, spent 10 years in the field and has followed forestry matters avidly during retirement.
Forestry Matters – Part 3
Published July 23, 2026
Lifestyle of the Rational and Indigenous
There are 575 federally recognized Indian Tribes in the U.S., with the Pacific Northwest being home to at least 100 different tribal groups residing in a wide variety of habitats; from denser, forested coastal areas to arid inland areas, each with its own plant and animal communities upon which the locals were dependent. It was necessary for each group to develop survival strategies suited to their locations. Fire was the primary tool common to all groups. Since it was unlikely that a tribe’s local habitat contained all the resources necessary for survival, extensive, sophisticated trade networks existed between the Tribes. The Klikitat Tribe were the master traders of the Pacific Northwest, trading with the Yakima, Salishan and Chinookan Tribes, and later with the Hudson Bay Company at Fort Vancouver. The Klikitat Tribe used an annual migration pattern that illustrates one of the many systems the Indigenous Peoples employed to thrive in their environment. Ethnohistorical, ethnobotanical and ethnographic evidence was used to map out the seasonal migration route used by Klikitat Indians on their lands east of Vancouver, Washington, north of the Columbia River, south of Mount St. Helens and east to the Cascade Crest, a route now known as the Klikitat Trail.
Winter villages near the Klikitat and White Salmon Rivers were occupied from November until early May with occasional fishing excursions to the Columbia River.
Late winter-early spring: harvest sucker (a fish) and “Indian celeries”.
Late April- May: catch Chinook Salmon.
Late May-July: harvest and prepare camas at mid-elevation prairies, and harvest of early-maturing serviceberry, chokecherry kinnikinnick and hawthorn as well as trout at Trout Lake.
August: The peak social season, called “huckleberry month” where members of many Tribes gathered in the subalpine meadows and previously burned clearings at the Cascade Crest to socialize, gamble, hold horse races and trade. The huckleberries were harvested in large quantities using a wooden comb; mashed, dried and formed into cakes and often mixed with dried meats and fat to create pemmican. Huckleberries were considered a gift from the Creator, the “chief of all berries”, and a staple of their diet.
End of August: Return to mid-elevation prairies and harvest late-maturing fruits, nuts and camas. Camas was prepared by lining a large pit with stones, building a large, hot fire in the pit, lining the pit with skunk cabbage leaves and filling the pit with camas bulbs, then cover and cook for four days. Camas have a sweet, rich and earthy flavor like a mix of baked pear, roasted sweet potato and caramelized fig.·
September-November: Harvest acorns and hazelnuts.
Return to winter villages. As the Klickitat left the Cascade Crest in August and began their returned to their winter sites after harvesting, they would set fire to small conifers invading the huckleberry fields, then burn the camas prairies, then the oak groves and many of the grassy meadows along the way. The frequent light burning of these areas was not destructive to the land. It removed the encroaching grasses, brush and conifer seedlings and reduced them to mineral matter which was fertilizer for future crops. In the case of the huckleberry patches they knew they could not pick them the next year, but the year following they would have a great harvest. Burning the camas prairies and open meadows kept the forest from encroaching, and in the oak groves the fires kept the groves from becoming Douglas-fir forests and eliminated undergrowth, as it was much easier to pick up the acorns on the forest floor, rather than searching through the brush. This was all orchestrated and refined through years of experience.
The following quote from Lara. A. Jacobs (Citizen of Muscogee/Creek/ Nation best describes this relationship: “Across many Tribal Nations, fire is medicine. It has the power to heal lands after they have been scarred, to protect beings who dwell within them, and to restore balance in ways both visible and unseen. Fire teaches, reminding us of the ties that sustain our kinship with trees, water, winds, animals, and all our more-than-human relatives who share its warmth and power. To live well with fire is to honor the relationships and responsibilities it carries, with people, with land, and with the living world that breathes through flame.”
Next: David Douglas and Indigenous Burning in the Willamette Valley
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