- Title:
-
Ecological Restoration Applications: Indigenous Burning Practices in Pacific Northwest, United States.
- Date:
- September 2008
- Organisations
- Bureau of Indian Affairs
- Authors:
- Bodie K. Shaw
- Location:
- USA, United States of America
Overview
The International Bushfire Research Conference 2008 - incorporating The 15th annual AFAC Conference, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
Understanding historic fire regimes is essential before attempting to restore fire to ecosystems. In addition, recognizing the cultural and historic fire ecology provides a means to address restoration applications. Also, specific attention needs to be paid to having a full understanding of how traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) practices of Indigenous peoples influenced various ecosystems historically.
Throughout the pre-European Pacific Northwest, Indian cultures used fire in different yet internally consistent ways. In the interior valleys between the Coast and the Cascade ranges of Oregon and Washington (USA), repeated firing maintained open prairie lands where the native peoples' most important wild plant foods grew. In the Columbia Basin, regular firing held back the growth of sagebrush and promoted the growth of bunchgrasses and forbs.
Indigenous burning kept the understories of the ponderosa pine forests open and extended into higher elevation, eastern forests where the fire use was spottier. Along the Cascade crest, Indian-caused fires maintained mountain huckleberry patches, and in the upper highlands it promoted the growth of important root crops. Along the wet coastline, burning was less common, though locally intense, and mostly associated with the regeneration of various species of wild berries.
TEK is beginning to take hold and be incorporated in environmental restoration practices throughout Indigenous and non-Indigenous land holdings in the Pacific Northwest. We can do more, however.
