As a part of the recent Harney County Migratory Bird Festival, I had the opportunity over two days to watch several hundred people enjoy bird watching at Malheur’s headquarters complex. We all know the site. It is a complex of historic New Deal-era stone buildings surrounded by lawns and mature trees. The word “idyllic” comes to mind. Certainly, our avian friends think so.
But is it natural? The answer, simply and maybe even surprisingly to some, is no.
If we define natural as a landscape designed by native ecosystems and populated with native species, then this wonderful place that we all love is anything but natural. Instead, it is a landscape designed and managed by people, a process that goes back centuries and continues to this day.
Historically, the key feature on the site was a generous spring that flowed into the river and sent its waters on toward the extensive wetlands surrounding Malheur Lake. Adjacent to the marshes was a slope of dry, higher ground. Native Americans took advantage of the site, residing there seasonally for many centuries. In the latter years of the nineteenth century, a rancher took over the site and its spring and called the place Sodhouse. Like almost all ranchers in the region, our rancher added trees to the site, most likely cottonwoods. They prospered.
As we all know, Sodhouse Spring became a part of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and in the 1930s the government set out to develop a headquarters complex on the site. The goal, echoing similar developments at many other government sites in the arid West, was to create a friendly oasis. This would become a place with handsome buildings and extensive lawns and numerous trees. It was this effort, one based on a human desire to create a certain sort of feeling and one making use of numerous imported plants, that the Malheur headquarters complex became what it is today.
To understand how artificial a place this is, one must simply compare the headquarters landscape to what surrounds it. The contrast is clear.
Don’t misunderstand me here. There is nothing inherently wrong with this very special place. It is friendly and beautiful, and its many mature trees provide attractive habitat for many birds in what is otherwise a nearly tree-free landscape. Just recognize it for what it is; an anthropogenic landscape.
This logic, by the way, applies to much more of Malheur NWR than just its headquarters site. Large parts of the refuge are shaped by human history and are intensively managed. We’ll talk more about this in coming newsletters.
