Little remains of the Garry oak ecosystem in the Pacific Northwest of North America. Cultivated by natives centuries earlier, nearly eradicated by European immigrants since the mid-1800’s, only now are desperate conservation efforts being made to preserve the ecologically diverse meadows.
By Deborah Jones, Duncan, British Columbia
To the uninitiated, a typical Garry oak appears to be suffering a grotesque botanical disease, with moss drooping off warped branches and twisting limbs protruding from a hoary trunk. But to their protectors, the trees represent both an ecological marvel and an ancient model of sustainable agriculture -- and besides, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
"Garry oaks grow gnarly," said Irvin Banman, a restoration technician with the Nature Conservancy of Canada, who lives in a historic house on a 27-acre Garry oak preserve on Maple Bay Road. "Their tendency is to branch out and spread crookedly."
Of the moss making every twig of every tree appear hirsute, he said "it doesn't affect their health."
Banman, whose job is to remove invasive species and tend the health of the trees, is on the front lines of Canadian and U.S. efforts to restore Garry oak meadows. These ecosystems are the most diverse in British Columbia and include more than 100 of Canada's endangered insects, plants and animals.
Garry oak ecosystems were never wild, untouched by human hand. The meadows were creations of aboriginal people, who tended them for thousands of years to promote the growth of their agricultural products.
Before the mid-1800s, Garry oaks (Quercus garryana, named after Nicholas Garry, a 19th-century Hudson's Bay official, and sometimes called Oregon oaks) stretched from southern B.C. along the Pacific Coast to California.
Edible plants flourished beneath the trees, including the Deltoid balsam root and camas lilies, the bulbs of which were a staple food in aboriginal diets. For thousands of years, locals promoted camas growth by annually burning the meadows' ground cover to destroy unwanted plants, said Stephanie Peter of the Cowichan Tribes First Nation.
"The idea that the landscape is simply a virgin landscape is far from true," said anthropologist Bruce Miller of the University of British Columbia. "The Coast Salish people managed the landscape even though they were primarily fishers. Early Europeans didn't notice . . . it's like Goldilocks and the three bears; they came into the table that was set."
Local people also propagated the Garry oaks, said Prof. Miller, who noted that genetic tests proved that an oak stand in the Fraser River Valley was planted from seeds aboriginal people brought from Vancouver Island.
But by the mid-1800s, European settlers in B.C. forced the aboriginal people to stop burning. Other native tree species soon spread into the meadows, but much more damaging, experts say, was the introduction of species from Europe. European immigrants replaced the vegetation in the meadows down the Pacific Coast with European grazing and ornamental grasses, Scotch broom, English hawthorn, daphne laurel and English ivy.
"They eventually took over and formed a dominant cover," said Tim Ennis, provincial land stewardship officer with the Nature Conservancy. On the organization's preserve in Duncan, he said, only five of 16 species of grass are native, and the invaders compete for water, nutrients and light.
Today, less than 5 per cent of the Garry oak ecosystem is left in the world, conservation groups say. Conservation and restoration of the remainder is under way, with support by all levels of government, academics and several native bands. At the Duncan preserve Mr. Banman manages, volunteers remove invasive species such as Scotch broom by hand, and researchers are experimenting with burning, mowing and even chemical herbicides, Mr. Ennis said.
Ms. Peter, who has worked on environmental issues with the Cowichan Tribes, said she hopes one day to eat camas, the staple food of her ancestors. "I've never had one. I've read that it tastes like cooked pear," she said, adding that camas is more healthy than potatoes.
Part of the challenge of preserving Garry oak ecosystems is the soaring value of real estate on Vancouver Island, Mr. Ennis said. Garry oaks prefer what he calls "nice sunny view lots" -- the same properties considered prime development real estate. Many remaining Garry oak meadows on Vancouver Island are being subdivided for housing, Mr. Ennis said, including tracts near Bear Mountain and west of Victoria. One rare success story was a stand in Victoria's Inner Harbour, where a savvy developer traded land with Garry oaks on it for development concessions.
"It's starting to happen, but it's a race against time," Mr. Ennis said.
He said it's not a contradiction for environmentalists to restore an ecosystem that aboriginals created for agriculture. "It gets to the question, is man a part of nature, or not?" he said. "It seems clear that human beings are a part of nature."
Copyright Deborah Jones 2007
About this website: Text and photos by Deborah Jones except where otherwise noted.