B.C. Indigenous conservation plan gets private backing

Overhanging a riverbank within the Fraser Canyon, an ancient Western redcedar shows signs of harvesting by past generations of the T’eqt’’aqtn’mux people. The gnarled tree is growing in considered one of the rarest and most endangered old-growth forests in British Columbia, and a newly sealed land deal has secured its protection. But for the encircling forest, there isn’t any certainty.

The Kanaka Bar Indian Band – also often known as the T’eqt’’aqtn’mux – is proposing an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area to preserve its ancient connection to those lands, and to guard a wealthy pocket of biodiversity for the planet. Within the southern canyon, along the Fraser River, the province’s wet coastal and dry interior zones meet, allowing an unusual number of species to mingle.

While logging firms have cleared large swaths of old growth in the standard territories of the T’eqt’’aqtn’mux, evidence of this First Nation’s sustainable harvesting practices continues to be present in living trees that didn’t fall to business logging: Researchers have confirmed that branches and bark strips have been harvested here from select cedar trees because the early 18th century, and even before then.

Stein Valley

Nlaka’Pamux

Heritage Park

Old Man

Jack’s

property

Proposed T’eqt’aqtn Indigenous

Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA)

Parks and guarded areas

MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: NATURAL RESOURCES CANADA; BC DATA CATALOGUE; KANAKA BAR INDIAN BAND

Stein Valley

Nlaka’Pamux

Heritage Park

Old Man

Jack’s

property

Proposed T’eqt’aqtn Indigenous

Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA)

Parks and guarded areas

MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: NATURAL RESOURCES CANADA; BC DATA CATALOGUE; KANAKA BAR INDIAN BAND

Proposed T’eqt’aqtn

Indigenous Protected

and Conserved Area (IPCA)

Parks and guarded areas

Stein Valley

Nlaka’Pamux

Heritage Park

Old Man Jack’s property

MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: NATURAL RESOURCES CANADA; BC DATA CATALOGUE; KANAKA BAR INDIAN BAND

However the protected area plan awaits the support of Ottawa and Victoria – approval that’s caught in a protracted negotiation between the 2 levels of presidency over old-growth protection.

The target of the proposed Indigenous protected area matches right into a larger aim shared by the federal government.

Canada has made international commitments to guard 30 per cent of its lands and waters by 2030, and a recent report from World Wildlife Fund Canada says Indigenous-managed conservation can be key to achieving those targets.

Montreal will host a UN conference on biodiversity later this yr and heading into that event, the Justin Trudeau government can be pressed to indicate the way it intends to almost double the country’s existing protected areas by 2025 to satisfy its interim targets.

British Columbia, which boasts the best amount of biodiversity within the country, also has interests that align with the Kanaka Bar proposal: The provincial government has pledged to suspend logging in one-third of B.C.’s remaining’s old-growth forests to guard irreplaceable ecosystems which are disappearing under intensive forestry – but to do this with Indigenous consent, which has been slow to garner.

The Kanaka Bar proposals would hit the sweet spot for each governments: Kanaka Bar intends to guard and restore rare ecosystems in a way that supports the First Nation’s self-sufficiency initiatives and sustainable economic development.

The community’s impetus for conservation has been shaped by business logging – 15 per cent of the forests in its proposed conservation area has been logged because the Nineteen Sixties – mostly within the wealthy valley bottoms where the best old growth is found.

The federal and B.C. governments are in protracted negotiations to achieve a nature agreement that may include everlasting old-growth protection.

Nevertheless, the 2 sides remain at odds over funding, and which forests could be put aside. The federal government has offered $50-million specifically for B.C. old growth, a figure that the province dismissed as far too little. Ottawa, meanwhile, is awaiting the matching commitment from the province.

Steven Guilbeault, the federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change, toured an old-growth forest in B.C. on Sept. 1, using the visit as a backdrop to press the provincial government to achieve an accord. “We are going to proceed collaborating with the province to get an excellent deal to guard B.C.’s beloved nature,” he said in a press release at the moment.

Patrick Michell, former chief of the Kanaka Bar Indian Band, was instrumental in launching the proposed T’eqt’aqtn Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area, and he said neither level of presidency has responded to the invitation to participate. However the plan will move forward anyway: “When we’d like to do something, we just do it,” he said in an interview.

His community has been buying up private lands after they develop into available, moderately than waiting for the Crown to present them their land back. Their vision for climate resiliency doesn’t include business logging of old growth.

“We would like to maintain the old growth, keep the carbon in the bottom,” he said. “For us to have an economy for the subsequent 100 years, we’d like to speculate in something more sustainable and resilient.” Economic development is feasible, but inside a framework that supports Kanaka Bar’s goals. “We would like to work with Canadian corporations. We would like to work with the prevailing transportation industries. But there’s going to be just a few recent rules. You can not exacerbate climate change.”

The one firm commitment to the Kanaka Bar conservation plan to this point has come from a fledgling environmental non-profit, which bought a chunk of personal land to gift to the community.

The property known locally as Old Man Jack’s is a tiny parcel, just a little greater than three hectares, which was scooped up for slightly below $100,000. It’s dwarfed by the more ambitious Kanaka Bar proposal to put aside a big chunk of the southern Fraser Canyon within the First Nation’s traditional territories, including roughly 125 square kilometres of old-growth forests. However it is a concrete start.

Old Man Jack’s property, purchased by the Nature-Based Solutions Foundation, is a showcase for the region, with its unusual mixture of coastal and interior species: Ponderosa pine, Interior Douglas fir, Western redcedar, Bigleaf maple, all growing together. “That is peak biodiversity – as multicultural as you possibly can get in a B.C. forest,” said Ken Wu, co-founder of the inspiration, as he identified considered one of the biggest Interior Douglas firs within the country.

Mr. Wu began campaigning for B.C.’s old-growth forests greater than 20 years ago. The muse was created last yr to boost money to buy endangered ecosystems, sidestepping the conflict that has marked many campaigns against old-growth logging.

“Protests are essential at times,” Mr. Wu said, “but to really save old-growth forests, it’s critical to make sure First Nations have the financial resources in an effort to realize their conservation visions,” he said. Many First Nations depend on forestry for revenue and jobs – and he said the provincial and federal governments must bring substantial funding to the table to create viable alternatives.

“There’s no path to really protect old-growth forests on the bottom in British Columbia by going around First Nations communities and leadership,” Mr. Wu said.

The Fraser Canyon was on the epicentre of the dual climate disasters of 2021 in B.C. The most important Kanaka Bar reserve is roughly 14 kilometres south of Lytton, the town destroyed by wildfire in June of 2021, and plenty of members lost their homes in that fireplace. A series of atmospheric rivers in November then worn out more homes, highways and other infrastructure, causing tens of millions of dollars of harm to the Kanaka Bar’s run-of-the-river hydro electric facility.

For the past decade, the Kanaka Bar nation has worked on a climate adaptation plan, which has goals to create a self-sufficient community that may withstand whatever climate change brings in the subsequent century. About 70 of the band’s 240 members continue to exist reserve, getting their electricity from solar energy. The nation has purchased provincial water rights to make sure their clean water supply. And community gardens complement the food they obtain from their lands.

The T’eqt’aqtn Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area would help all the Fraser Canyon’s climate resiliency, said Sean O’Rourke, the Kanaka Bar lands manager, because healthy ecosystems are the region’s best defence against natural disasters.

However it also goals to guard the T’eqt’’aqtn’mux’s archeological sites. Mr. O’Rourke pointed across the Fraser River to the stays of a stone-constructed fishing weir, disrupted by placer miners in search of gold. The rainstorms last November uncovered a petroglyph that’s believed to be not less than 8,000 years old. It was damaged when treasure hunters removed a chunk of it with a jackhammer.

“These connections to the past and connections to the old lifestyle, that’s a finite thing,” Mr. O’Rourke said. “When you damage something like that, you’re never going to get it back.”

Forests and climate: More from The Globe and Mail

The Decibel

More coverage

Rare lichen enlisted in old-growth logging battle

Canada urged to guard forests as a part of plan to scale back emissions

Once sidelined from forestry of their traditional territory, Huu-ay-aht First Nations are actually a big player with plans to expand

Opinion

Peter Kuitenbrouwer: Canadians love forests. So why don’t they feel the identical way about foresters?

Lyndsie Bourgon: How B.C.’s forests have develop into flashpoints for poachers and protesters alike

Was Fairy Creek the Clayoquot Sound of the 2020s? Not quite – and activists need to grasp why