Habitat Pact Helps Tribe Preserve Huckleberries Worry Over Less-Plentiful Harvest Prompts Warm Springs Effort

Although huckleberries still flourish in the Oregon Cascades, the acreage is dwindling, and some Indians fear they soon may go the way of the salmon.

Louis Pitt Jr., 49, director of government affairs for the Warm Springs tribe, remembers his mother gathering the berries on mountain slopes.

“She used to pick berries upon berries,” he said. “It was like medicine to her.”

But Pitts and others worry that increasing population, mechanical and recreational pickers and some forest management practices could threaten the remaining fields of the wild fruit, to which the Warm Springs have rights under an 1855 treaty.

The Warm Springs have an agreement with the Mount Hood National Forest to seek ways to enhance the huckleberry habitat through controlled burns or selective cutting while still managing the forest.

Judith R. Vergun, a professor of oceanic and atmospheric science at Oregon State University, has been working for years with the tribe, federal forest researchers and managers and others to get a handle on how many huckleberries are left and how best to manage them.

They want to know what the area was like in the early 1800s when tribes burned huckleberry fields to remove growth that choked off needed sunlight from the berry bushes.

She figures that today there are at least 1 million acres of berries in the Cascades.

“As far as I can tell the huckleberry supply has been dwindling,” she said.

The overall number of plants and productive fields has diminished greatly, she said.

She sees huckleberries as an indicator species as well, one which can help determine whether an overall forest is healthy.

The treaty gave the Warm Springs tribal members exclusive rights to the berries on their 640,000-acre reservation. On the 10 million ceded acres around it they share the rights with others including commercial harvesters.

The treaty also gives the Indians rights to elk, deer and roots to maintain their culture and tribal traditions.

Many tribal members consider huckleberries even today a sacred food along with the salmon and other things found in the wild. They are a part of weddings, funerals and other religious celebrations.

Some families still camp in the foothills, usually above 4,000 feet, each summer beginning in about August to harvest the berries.

Because their commercial value is minimal the berries are not endangered yet and that’s the way tribal elders would like to keep it.