Lindsay, Travis and Jesus from Grand Ronde meet with Ben at the Noble Oaks restoration project — Lindsay, Travis and Jesus from the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde meet with Ben at the Noble Oaks restoration project in the Willamette Valley.

There are nine federally recognized tribes spread across the State of Oregon. Since time immemorial, they had been managing the landscapes of Oregon in particular ways for particular ends. Fire was the most common of those management tools, and here in the Willamette Valley, the landscape, flora and fauna evolved with native management over millennia. There is much that I with my white settler heritage do not know or understand about the complex ways that the Native Americans managed these landscapes. I have had the privilege to learn some of this history though after living in this valley for most of my life.

Prior to 1830, the landscape of the Willamette Valley consisted of ponderosa pine and Oregon ash in the swampy valley bottoms, and sprawling oak savannas in the prairies and upland areas. These savannas had well spaced individual large spreading oak trees with grasslands underneath. This environment was maintained by fire, and it supported easy gathering of the three most common food sources for the native Kalapuyans in this area; camas, acorns and venison. Fire kept the underbrush and Douglas-fir at bay and allowed the fire adapted grasses and oak trees to flourish. This landscape and ecosystem is vividly described in David Douglas’ first person account of his travels through the Willamette Valley in 1825.

Unfortunately, over the last 200 years, with the removal of the Native Americans and their land management practices from much of this area, the ecological composition of the valley has changed dramatically. Now, less than 5% of the Oregon white oak ecosystem remains intact. While we have been working to restore the oak here in the Zena Forest we also work to support restoration efforts throughout the valley, and beyond.

In the Northwest part of the state, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, Siletz and Warm Springs have all undertaken massive restoration efforts to bring back these important ecosystems to the Willamette Valley. We have been fortunate to work with our close neighbor, the Grand Ronde for a number of years now to support their restoration efforts by buying hardwood logs. We recently toured their Noble Oaks Restoration property where they have and continue to undertake restoration work on a massive scale. While most of the logs coming off of this property are quite small, this wood represents a great fit for our EdgeGrain flooring, which is well suited to utilize small diameter logs.

In addition, we purchase all of our myrtle lumber for our EdgeGrain flooring from the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians. They operate their own sawmill facility to salvage material off of their tribal forests after devastating fires swept through their land. These fires grew significantly more intense and catastrophic due to the removal of fire from landscape for so many generations.

I am honored to be able to partner wherever I can to support this important restoration work, and am thankful to these tribes for entrusting their precious natural resources to us to process into flooring that will continue to live on for generations, and at the same time support the important ongoing restoration work taking place.

Partnerships: Oregon Tribes, Landscape Management and Zena