What's left when there is no more resistance?

I think about the nature of survival every time I look south and see the face of the Butte, which was scoured by the Chelan fires last year. I’ve spent considerable time on its slopes in years past cataloging wildflowers and catching native bees, so each time I saw the Butte’s face charred and crisp like a piece of forgotten toast, there stirred within me a blend of longing, affection, and concern. I run through each species in my mind and ask myself if it will reappear this year.

There are two strategies for survival: resilience, which bends before disturbance, is lain low, and rises again when commotion has passed; and resistance, which bears the brunt of disturbance and carries on, with scars chronicling the conflagration.  At times I think of resilience as a “hedge-your-bets” type of strategy and resistance as a “go-for-broke” strategy.

When I look at the post-fire landscape on the Butte I see evidence of those that broke under the blaze. Scores of Ponderosa torches stand like black lances with brown skirts, even now as spring is underway. “Decimated” is a bit of an understatement, perhaps one could say the Ponderosa population was “pentamated”; around every five in ten, easily half, of the mature trees were not resistant to last year’s fire. The same is likely for the big sagebrush, antelope brush, rabbit brush and wax current, whose growing points are all above ground at the apical and lateral meristems.

And yet, the Butte is almost radiant with tender green across its face. I imagine the Idaho fescue, need-and-thread grass, bluebunch wheat grass, and the very rare big bluestem burgeoning quite nicely. I surmise that arrowleaf balsamroot, biscuit root, death camas, chocolate tops, desert parsley, and other robustly-rooted forbs are making appearances as well. Resilience may have been the advantageous strategy in that fire event.

The Chelan Butte - blackened
Photo by Brian Cantwell of The Seattle Times

Much of the over-story of the Ponderosa pine-sagebrush steppe habitat has been removed and grasses and non-woody forbs are left in their stead. It begs the question, are the 10,000 acres that burned here still sagebrush steppe? Do we have a disturbed ecosystem that will regress back to its historical state, or an altered ecosystem that has transitioned to grassland? Is this a site that needs rehabilitation or a site that will need restoration?  

Before the fires, managing for resistance and resilience may have been a wise strategy. Bolstering the integrity of an endemic ecosystem against discrete disturbances will always have benefits, such as maintaining refugia and biodiversity to oblige emigration as time passes. However, the greatest threat to this habitat (other than mass wasting) is now exotic annual invasion. (If I see the face of the Butte blush purple with cheat grass and tufts of knapweed this summer, I may weep.) For now, maintaining native biodiversity against invasives – which may in time serve the dual purpose of building resilience – should be priority number one.