In recent decades, the two northern species of camas, Camassia leichtlinii and C. quamash, have been disappearing markedly on Salt Spring Island and other Gulf Islands. Fields of camas were harvested and stewarded by Salish women who have been effectively obstructed from their gardens for more than a century. Similarly, controlled burning based on five millennia of Salish knowledge, and often carefully focused on maintaining sites of camas and other nutritious bulbs, has been outlawed. And sheep grazing, that initially involved Salish engaging in more western agriculture, began in the 1850s and continued until 2001 (even in the original boundaries of the Ecological Reserve) along with a large feral population. And spiking, native deer populations, buoyed by the lack of historical predators and hiking, have grazed remaining the tops of blooming camas bulbs before they have been able to produce seed.
In this area of Mount Maxwell, where the original Ecological Reserve was established in the early 1970s, Cowichan food gatherers were active and burning until the 1930s. Since then, the Garry oak savannah, the original Salish fields, have grown in to woodland and Douglas fir forest. And in 1980-81, I proposed re-establishment of some controlled burning in this area in a report to the Ecological Reserves Unit of the Province of British Columbia (as part of my M.Sc. thesis in Ecosystem Management).
As as the decades have passed, the population of flowering camas on Salt Spring Island have plummeted. Curiously, one of the few signs of any increase in camas populations and ANY reproduction has been seen in the area burned in the June 12 – 15, 2009. What is unclear, after this May 8, 2014 site report, is whether or not there has been an increase in camas throughout the burned areas or just those that saw the application (or more likely lack of application) of fire retardant. Another question is whether or not the seed that was being produced on May 8 continued to ripen (or was browsed) and was viable.
These photographs were taken in collaboration with Julian Castle. We jointly made these exposures and montages as ‘castle & ingram’.