The Ozette Prairies of Olympic National Park - Natural Resources ...

Introduction
The Ozette Prairies—openings of bog, fen, and grassland in a forest of Sitka spruce, western hem-
lock, and western redcedar—lie two kilometers east of the Pacific Ocean, well within hearing distance
of barking sea lions on the rocky islands offshore. One can walk from these wetlands to the coast on the
Cape Alava Trail, which cuts through the openings and the surrounding forest along the route of an old
Indian trail (Waterman 1920). Wandering off the trail into the forest, the travel becomes slow and cumbersome;
one has to straddle downed logs and bushwhack through shrubbery and young trees.
The wetlands, on the other hand, are easily and comfortably traversed. They are inviting landing
sites for ducks and geese, habitat for ground-nesting birds, and are attractive to Roosevelt elk, blacktailed
deer, and black bears. Before the coming of white settlers, they were also attractive to the Ozette
Indians, who hunted and collected food and useful plants there for perhaps 2,000 years (Blinman 1980;
Wessen 1984). The Ozette people would come to the Ozette Prairies from their village at Cape Alava on
the Pacific Ocean, seeking young horsetail sprouts to eat in spring, the leaves of a particular sedge to
weave into their baskets in summer, and bog cranberries, Indian tea leaves, and fern rhizomes in autumn.
They built shelters in the wetlands and dried and smoked their food there (Bertelson 1948; Gunther 1871-
1981). Before 1910, two Swedish immigrants—Peter Roose and Lars Ahlstrom—filed 160 acre claims and
moved onto these open areas, built structures, raised sheep and cattle, and planted vegetable gardens
(see Figures 1 and 2). When Ahlstrom first moved to the area in 1902, he lived in an Ozette Indian hut
and interacted with the Ozette as described by Bertelson (1948): “He got along fine with the Ozettes, and
bought salvaged drift-boards and planks from them with which to build. And after he got settled and had
acquired four cows, he traded butter and garden truck with the Indians for fish and game.”
Today, butterfly and plant experts view the Ozette Prairies as a wilderness refuge—a place shel-
tering unique plant and animal life. They are a biological focus area of the National Park Service because
they represent excellence in beauty and biological diversity and harbor an array of rare and endangered
plant and animal species (http://www1.dnr.wa.gov/nhp/refdesk/lists/plantrnk.html; Pyle 2002). In recognition
of their cultural and ecological value, the wetlands have received official protection; their structures
are on the National Register of Historic Places and the land is designated as wilderness or potential
wilderness (Washington Park Wilderness Act of 1988; Ruth Scott pers. comm. 2007).
But formal designation alone is not enough to save the biotic diversity of these areas, as they are
shrinking. Young western hemlock and redcedar trees, along with some Sitka spruce and Pacific yew, are
advancing into the open habitats (see Figure 3). In the early 1940s, Alice Kalappa, Makah, complained to
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