Forestry matters — Part 1

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, July 8, 2026

As we enter a new and possibly more threatening wildfire season, I have the opportunity to write a series of articles concerning the wildfire/forest management conundrum that we now face.

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. Following a stint in the service, I 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 ever since.

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. 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.

“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.” — Mark Twain

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.

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.