Friends of Sausal Creek |
The primary management tool used by California's indigenous peoples was fire, and its regular use affected the landscape profoundly. In an ecological setting where annual rainfall is variable and streams and springs often dry up in the summer, fire was a food-production technique far more efficient than agriculture. |
Although there is little ethnographic or archaeological data on the Huchiun Ohlone who would have inhabited the Sausal Creek watershed, it is likely that they followed a subsistence pattern similar to that recorded for other native groups. They used fire, digging, and pruning to increase plant resources for their benefit. The Huchiun must have coevolved with the landscape in the sense that they had millennia to learn what resources it held for them and how to manipulate those resources to their best advantage. Indeed, some feel that due to their numbers and ability to modify their habitat, California's Indians were a keystone species and integral part of their environment without whom ecosystem stability would be threatened. Many of California's ecosystems are adapted to fire because this process serves to rejuvenate communities by initiating secondary succession. It is well documented that plant production and diversity increase after fire due to reduction in cover, addition of nutrients to the soil, and increases in water availability. Therefore, indigenous people used fire ecology to manage the Sausal Creek watershed. California's native peoples burned grassland on a frequent basis, annually to every few years, as grassland fires rejuvenate perennial bunchgrasses and remove dead thatch, providing the opportunity for other herbacious plants to germinate. By returning nutrients to the soil, grassland fires increase bulb production as well. Fire in chaparral, burned at intervals from seven to 30 years, results in an overall increase in the biodiversity and production of shrubs and herbaceous species, with both direct and indirect benefits for hunting and gathering. Stands of unburned chaparral become so dense that herbaceous species are shaded out and diversity decreases. Fire reduces the shrub canopy, allowing grasses and other herbaceous plants to grow until the shrubs resprout and regain dominance. The seeds of some herbaceous species are capable of lying dormant for many years and will only germinate following fire. Pallid manzanita, for example, is a species that depends on fire for reproduction. Fire in oak woodlands, burned at least every three to five years, clears out the understory and reduces competition for water and nutrients, thus producing healthier trees while maintaining a diverse, herbaceous understory. |
