The efforts made that day would by no means reach the endgame. On the contrary; this was just the very beginning of what needs to be done to save this species. If Garry Oak is only at 5% of its former habitat, what is it that we’re missing out on? The answer is a long one—one that will take years to understand fully, if we ever do at all. But every worthwhile endeavor must have a starting point. Armed with hundreds of saplings, perhaps two feet tall including the roots, we set to work. In my opinion, there’s nothing like going out there and getting your hands dirty to really learn about something. And boy did that ever ring true, literally in this case, as the sound of our shovels hitting gravel beneath the topsoil confirmed. Right then and there we learned that Garry Oak can thrive in the more well-drained soils that gravel provides, one of the few advantages it has over the ever-present fir trees here in the Pacific Northwest.

“You see a very different picture and begin to understand how people actually lived here before American settlers came through”

Garry Oak savannas look so different from the other landscapes here in the region. Washington State is known as the Evergreen State, full of Douglas Fir and other coniferous trees. Really the whole Pacific Northwest conjures this image. But when you begin to piece together the history of the landscape, you see a very different picture and begin to understand how people actually lived here before American settlers came through.

Native Americans have been here since the retreat of the Cordilleran Ice Lobe, a part of the massive ice sheet that covered a significant portion of the northern hemisphere during the last ice age, up to some ten thousand years ago. We’ll never know the full history of Garry Oak, but we can say with some certainty that throughout its range, including here in the Puget Sound region, Native Americans were carefully maintaining the woodlands composed of this species of oak. By taking advantage of wildfires, and by starting controlled burns of their own, these people would clear out any competitors to the naturally fire-resistant oaks. The remaining landscape would be nearly unrecognizable to most of today’s residents: a flat, grassy landscape filled not with the now-omnipresent fir trees, but with beautiful, open stands of oak. This landscape was maintained as a food-bearing ecosystem, all centered around the Garry Oak trees. The oaks would drop thousands of acorns each year which would, along with fresh grasses, provide a source of food directly to people. But more importantly, they would serve as a very attractive source of sustenance to the deer and elk that roamed the region. In turn, these animals would serve as an important resource to the hunters who stalked this landscape. The grasses and other low vegetation, such as blue camas, chocolate lily, and fern were valuable in their own way, each contributing something to the food ecosystem. An incredibly unique cuisine also developed here, one that is now at risk of becoming lost to time.