Special History:
The Environment and the Fur Trade Experience in
Voyageurs National Park, 1730-1870

Chapter Four
The Natural Environment in the Fur Trade Era (continued)

Conclusion

In Voyageurs National Park, natural resource managers have the mission to manage ecosystems so that they will approximate, as nearly as possible, the natural conditions that prevailed in the fur trade era. In addition, natural resource managers in Voyageurs National Park share the mission of natural resource managers in other national parks: to preserve natural processes such that the national park can provide baseline data about the way that relatively healthy ecosystems functioned in the past and are apt to function or not function in the future. Twenty years ago when Voyageurs National Park was just five years old, natural resource managers approached their task with a different model of nature than that which prevails today. According to recent trends in ecological theory, the natural environment is less predictable and more influenced by random disturbances than was earlier thought. Natural resource managers must cope not only with a greater level of uncertainty about environmental change in the past, but also with the increasing likelihood that global warming may cause sweeping effects on the environment in the future.

This review of the historical literature revealed a few broad patterns of environmental change during the fur trade era. Most importantly, water levels fluctuated considerably from season to season and from year to year and extremes of high or low water probably caused more disturbance among wildlife populations and some types of vegetation (such as wild rice) than any other environmental factor. Although fluctuating water levels were the most dramatic result of climatic variation, mild or cold winters seem to have effected animal populations and plant life in other ways, too. Forest fires appear to have been fairly localized with the exception of widespread fires in 1803-04. A preliminary survey of forest-type descriptions suggests that maple and birch predominated along the shores of Rainy Lake in 1775, while various species of pine covered the same area 50 to 75 years later. Finally, it seems clear that beaver populations declined considerably over the first half of the nineteenth century, a condition that would have had significant consequences for forest types.

Historical sources may offer more help on some issues than others. As climate change looms larger in natural resource managers' understanding of past and present environmental conditions, intensive research of climatic data in the historical record may be considered worthwhile. Historical sources are also fairly rich in the amount of data they contain on faunal diversity, but they are less reliable with regard to animal population trends or fluctuations of abundance and scarcity. Historical sources provide some data on prevalent forest types at different points in time, but the data are generally not geographically precise. Finally, historical sources are probably most limited with regard to fisheries. Much of what can be gleaned from historical sources relating to the diversity and abundance of fish species and particularly productive fish habitat during the fur trade era has already been researched and synthesized in the anthropological literature on Ojibwe utilization of fish resources.

Table of Contents | Introduction | Rainy Lake Region | Fur Trade Experience | Material Culture | Natural Environment | Bibliography