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fire and drought-resistant oak trees. Within irrevocably through new patterns of land just a few generations, savanna-prairie is use, including grazing, agriculture, streets, transformed intoatemperate,mixedconifer and eventually industry and urban and hardwood forest. Plant communities, development. 1 and the creatures that depend upon them, - j disappear and give way to a new set of The Other Immigrants interrelationships that are adapted to the Euro-American settlers found that many of j changing conditions. theirfavorite plants broughtfrom other parts ! ~ of the world, including food crops and This process had already begun bythe time ornamental plants, thrived in the fertile soil The landscape the Skinners arrived. In the first half of the and favorable climate of the Willamette changed 19th century, the culture of theKalapuyawas Valley, with mild winters, high rainfall and dramaticallywifh the ~ already a shadow of what it once was. The cool summers. Collectors and enthusiasts arrival of invasive fires had decreased in frequency. The brought with them hundreds of new plant plant species planning and execution of fire species for their gardens. Many other j management, once highly organized and species were introduced accidentally, as sub-divided among the various tribal plants drifted in literally on the heels of the bands, had become increasingly erratic. newly arrived. Some of these plants ' Nevertheless, reports of early settlers naturalized (began to reproduce on their describe the area as o en meadows and p own in the wild), and in the blink of an fields that reminded them of cultivated evolutionary eye, the landscape began to wheat. look very different. ~ The pattern of open prairie was probably The most successful of these new species, maintained to some extent throughout the those that were able to reproduce so - settlement period by several factors, quickly and vigorously that they began to including removal of existing tree stands take over large areas and crowd out the for fuel and construction, agriculture and native plants, are known as "invasive" grazing. The slopes of Skinner Butte were species. Many invasive species dominate ! reportedly grazed by cattle and sheep in Skinner Butte Park today, including ~ the latter half of the 19th century. This Himalayan blackberry, Scotch broom, presumablykeptthecharacterofthesouth, English ivy, Norway maple, English east and west slopes similar to the time of the Skinners' arrival. The north side of the _ ~ Invasive species butte, however, being more conducive to ~ 4 = r ~ such as this ~ the germination of Douglas fir seedlings English laurel are j (more shade, moisture and deeper soils), ~ r~ ~ ~ ~ destroying habitats ~ had long since begun to develop into an ~ f in Skinner Butte early successional fir forest. ~ Park Also during this period, the wildlife of the ~ area was impacted by the habits and _ f survival needs of Euro-American settlers. Grizzly bears and wolves, among the most : ~ p feared and aggressively pursued of the ! large predators, disappeared from the Willamette Valley and continually retreated ° to more remote areas. A strong fur trade saw a significant reduction in numbers of small mammals such as coyote, fox, beaver and muskrat. Large birds of prey also began to decline as more settlers - arrived. The habits and patterns of many other species of animals were changed ~ 1 22 Chapter 2: Natural History and Cultural Context _ _ _