**Native American science students study camas lily at Nez Perce's
Weippe Prairie**

By Tom Rodhouse

Native American high school science students participating in the Oregon
Museum of Science and Industry's Salmon Camp Program visited the Nez
Perce National Historical Park in June 2005 to survey camas lily
(*Camassiah quamash*), a plant of both cultural and ecological
importance. The park is part of the Upper Columbia Basin Network, and
together with the network's Inventory and Monitoring Program, has
identified camas as a key park resource and a high-priority vital sign,
or indicator of ecosystem health, for long-term monitoring.

Camas, an ecologically significant wetland species, is historically one
of the most widely used root crops of the Nez Perce people, and remains
so for many tribal members today. It is also a focal resource at many
historical events memorialized by the park. In September 1805, during
the camas harvest at Weippe Prairie, located near Lewiston Idaho, the
Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery first encountered the Nez Perce. The
Corps had just completed the grueling journey over the Bitterroot
Mountains and were out of food and exhausted. The Nez Perce fed them
camas, among other things, and many historians believe that the
expedition would have failed without this assistance. Camas is therefore
a central element of the cultural landscapes that the park seeks to
interpret for the public, and its status as a focal cultural resource is
one of the driving rationales for establishing a camas monitoring
program.

Salmon Camp is a National Science Foundation supported program designed
to introduce Native American students to natural resource careers
through the unifying theme of Pacific Northwest salmon conservation and
recovery. Camas, like salmon, is also a culturally significant natural
resource in decline throughout the region, and, in a natural extension
to the salmon theme, students engaged in a "camas camp" and spent three
days of their program at the park site working with network and park
resource staff surveying camas and the invasive species sulphur
cinquefoil (*Potentilla recta*). Students were introduced to the
cultural history of the site by park interpretive staff. Three student
teams, each led by NPS staff, visited a set of sampling plots along a
pre-established grid of transects and measured stem density and
frequency of the two target plant species. They collected data that were
stored in hand-held computers (PDAs) with GPS and ArcPad GIS mapping
software provided to the network by the Rocky Mountain Cooperative
Ecosystem Studies Unit. The group spent their final afternoon together
compiling and reviewing results with ArcView GIS, and discussed the
significance of their findings for site management and long-term
monitoring.

Altogether the teams completed measurements at 177 plots along 16
transects. Preliminary results suggest a negative correlation between
camas and sulphur cinquefoil, in which camas is more frequent and
abundant in areas with less cinquefoil. This is encouraging news to the
park resource staff, which is conducting an active invasive species
control program at the site. Encouraging results were also obtained from
a preliminary calculation of required sample size for detecting change
in the frequency of these plant species over time. If these data are
representative of the entire site over subsequent years, then it appears
likely that a cost-effective and efficient camas monitoring program can
be conducted at the site. A monitoring program will provide park
resource staff with a direct measure of the camas population in addition
to that of threatening invasive weeds.

The Upper Columbia Basin Network is focused on developing a camas
monitoring protocol that will accommodate "citizen scientists" such as
Salmon Camp students and others like them. As a means of stretching
limited dollars, and to provide state-of-the-art science education, the
network hopes to develop citizen science components to several of its
monitoring efforts. The experience of the 2005 Salmon Camp program at
Weippe Prairie clearly demonstrates that with proper training, clearly
defined objectives, and detailed protocols this can be done. The network
plans to test a fully developed monitoring protocol for camas with
Salmon Camp students at Weippe Prairie again in 2006.

[tom_rodhouse@nps.gov](mailto:Tom_rodhouse@nps.gov)

Ecologist, Upper Columbia Basin Network, I&M Program, University of
Idaho, Moscow, Idaho

![](media/image1.jpeg){width="4.266666666666667in" height="3.2in"}

Nez Perce NHP resource manager Jason Lyon helps a Salmon Camp student
assemble quadrat sampling frames.

![](media/image2.jpeg){width="4.266666666666667in" height="3.2in"}

Salmon Camp students look for camas and sulphur cinquefoil inside a 0.5
m^2^ sampling frame.

![](media/image3.png){width="4.270833333333333in"
height="3.196527777777778in"}

Park staff and students study the results of camas sampling displayed in
an ArcView GIS map.