Photo by Brodie Guy
Summary
The North American Model is just one story of how wildlife conservation can be practiced. In part 2 of this mini-series we tell another: of restorative human–predator relationships and local self-determination.
We're bringing you a success story from the Great Bear Rainforest, and another articulation of how we can relate to wildlife — complete with its own set of guiding principles, naturally.
Show Notes
This episode features the voices of Shane Mahoney, Doug Neasloss, and Kyle Artelle.
And was produced by Adam Huggins and Mendel Skulski.
Music by Thumbug, Troll Dolly, Museum of No Art, and Sunfish Moon Light.
Special thanks to Mark Elbroch, Nuxalk Radio, Kyle Artelle, Amanda Hull, and Chris Dairmont.
✨ And as always, this episode was made possible with the support of our amazing patrons. 🌱
Citations
Artelle, K. A., Adams, M. S., Bryan, H. M., Darimont, C. T., Housty, J. (‘C., Housty, W. G., Moody, J. E., Moody, M. F., Neasloss, D. (M., Service, C. N., & Walkus, J. (2021). Decolonial model of Environmental Management and Conservation: Insights from indigenous-led Grizzly Bear Stewardship in the Great Bear Rainforest. Ethics, Policy & Environment, 24(3), 283–323.
Artelle, K. A., Anderson, S. C., Cooper, A. B., Paquet, P. C., Reynolds, J. D., & Darimont, C. T. (2013). Confronting uncertainty in wildlife management: Performance of Grizzly Bear Management. PLoS ONE, 8(11).
Artelle, K. A., Reynolds, J. D., Treves, A., Walsh, J. C., Paquet, P. C., & Darimont, C. T. (2018). Hallmarks of science missing from North American Wildlife Management. Science Advances, 4(3).
Artelle, K. A., Zurba, M., Bhattacharyya, J., Chan, D. E., Brown, K., Housty, J., & Moola, F. (2019). Supporting resurgent indigenous-led governance: A nascent mechanism for just and effective conservation. Biological Conservation, 240, 108284.
BC Wildlife Federation. (2017) BCWF Responds to Grizzly Hunt Ban
Darimont, C. T., Hall, H., Eckert, L., Mihalik, I., Artelle, K., Treves, A., & Paquet, P. C. (2021). Large carnivore hunting and the Social License to Hunt. Conservation Biology, 35 (4), 1111–1119.
Darimont, C. T., Paquet, P. C., Treves, A., Artelle, K. A., & Chapron, G. (2018). Political populations of large carnivores. Conservation Biology, 32(3), 747–749.
Eichler, L., & Baumeister, D. (2018). Hunting for Justice. Environment and Society, 9, 75–90.
Eichler, L., & Baumeister, D. (2021). Settler colonialism and the US conservation movement: Contesting Histories, indigenizing futures. Ethics, Policy & Environment, 24 (3), 209–234.
Hessami, M. A., Bowles, E., Popp, J. N., & Ford, A. T. (2021). Indigenizing the North American model of wildlife conservation. FACETS, 6, 1285–1306.
Koch, A., Brierley, C., Maslin, M. M., & Lewis, S. L. (2019). Earth system impacts of the European arrival and great dying in the Americas after 1492. Quaternary Science Reviews, 207, 13–36.
Mahoney, S. P., & Geist, V. (2019). The North American model of wildlife conservation. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development. (2022) Updates to Wildlife Act promote Indigenous interests
Organ, J.F., V. Geist, S.P. Mahoney, S. Williams, P.R. Krausman, G.R. Batcheller, T.A. Decker, R. Carmichael, P. Nanjappa, R. Regan, R.A. Medellin, R. Cantu, R.E. McCabe, S. Craven, G.M. Vecellio, and D.J. Decker. (2012). The North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. The Wildlife Society Technical Review 12-04. The Wildlife Society, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
Parker, I. D., Feldpausch-Parker, A. M., & Vidon, E. S. (2017). Privileging consumptive use: A Critique of ideology, power, and discourse in the North American model of wildlife conservation. Conservation and Society, 15 (1), 33–40.
Service, C. N., Adams, M. S., Artelle, K. A., Paquet, P., Grant, L. V., & Darimont, C. T. (2014). Indigenous knowledge and science unite to reveal spatial and temporal dimensions of distributional shift in wildlife of conservation concern. PLoS ONE, 9(7).
Treves, A. (2009). Hunting for large carnivore conservation. Journal of Applied Ecology, 46(6), 1350–1356.
Treves, A., Artelle, K. A., & Paquet, P. C. (2018). Differentiating between regulation and hunting as conservation interventions. Conservation Biology, 33(2), 472–475.
This episode includes audio recorded by Hupguy, RHumphries, sunnyflower, InspectorJ, john9, harpoyume, TRP, SpliceSound accessed through the Freesound Project, and protected by Creative Commons attribution licenses.
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Future Ecologies is recorded and produced on the unceded, shared, and asserted territories of the WSÁNEĆ, Penelakut, Hwlitsum, and Lelum Sar Augh Ta Naogh, and other Hul'qumi'num speaking peoples, otherwise known as Galiano Island, British columbia, as well as the unceded, shared, and asserted territories of the Musqueam (xwməθkwəy̓əm) Squamish (Skwxwú7mesh), and Tsleil-Waututh (Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh) Nations - otherwise known as Vancouver, British Columbia.
Transcription
Introduction Voiceover 00:00
You are listening to season four of Future Ecologies.
Adam Huggins 00:05
Well, I'll just get started then. I'm Adam.
Mendel Skulski 00:09
Mendel.
Adam Huggins 00:09
In the last episode, we discussed the NAM — short-hand for...
Mendel Skulski 00:14
The North American model of wildlife conservation.
Adam Huggins 00:17
And the NAM is?
Mendel Skulski 00:20
Uh… the NAM is... a set of principles that guide policy in wildlife conservation in North America, specifically, the US and Canada... A way that we think about and allocate wilderness and wildlife, mostly for the benefit of hunters.
Adam Huggins 00:41
Yeah, consumptive users.
Mendel Skulski 00:42
Consumptive users.
Adam Huggins 00:44
Yeah. And so I would say it's a sort of historical accounting, and also a proposal for wildlife conservation in North America.
Mendel Skulski 00:50
Yeah.
Adam Huggins 00:51
And can you remember any of the principles?
Mendel Skulski 00:53
Oh, God... uh... Do I have to do them in order?
Adam Huggins 00:56
No.
Mendel Skulski 00:56
Okay. I mean, the general gist of it is that that wildlife shouldn't be commodified. And that the state should have control over how it is managed. So taking it out of the hands of the free market, and putting it in the hands of the state, in order to make sure that populations are managed, access is managed, and perverse financial incentives don't cause humans to crash wildlife populations. Is that more or less it?
Adam Huggins 01:31
I think that's a really good recapitulation.
Mendel Skulski 01:32
Thank you.
Adam Huggins 01:33
And then there's a couple other bits, right, which are the wildlife are international resources, right. And that science —
Mendel Skulski 01:40
Capital S science is the way that we make these decisions, not business interests, not spirituality, not anything else.
Adam Huggins 01:50
That's right. And that, ideally, this system is democratically available to all citizens of good standing in North America — that we can all access wildlife as a resource.
Mendel Skulski 02:03
Right.
Adam Huggins 02:03
Resource being the key word.
Mendel Skulski 02:04
And commonly held!
Adam Huggins 02:06
A public trust resource. So we discussed some critiques of this model, in the last episode, from the perspective of its shortcomings around large carnivore conservation. Also, its lack of inclusivity, both socially and financially, right. We also discuss some of its successes, including the billions of dollars raised for wildlife conservation by institutions associated with the model, and the recovery of many formerly rare species that are now common.
Mendel Skulski 02:35
Specifically ones that we like to eat.
Adam Huggins 02:37
Specifically ones that we'd like to eat.
Shane Mahoney 02:39
The fact that wildlife conservation could intrude upon the religious, political, and economic forces that gave rise to the United States of America remains, for me, a small miracle... that the model, in quotation marks, helped gave rise to.
Adam Huggins 02:57
You remember Shane Mahoney, right?
Mendel Skulski 02:58
Yes
Adam Huggins 02:59
He literally co wrote the book on the model. And he's been a proponent for over two decades now, going back to when Dr. Valerius Geist first articulated the principles. So today, we're gonna get into some issues that we didn't have time to address in the last episode. Because, frankly, they're enormous. They're big issues. And the first one is the erasure of Indigenous peoples from the history that the model is describing and the principles that it articulates, which mirrors the settler colonial enterprise's attempt as a whole to erase Indigenous people from the continent.
Mendel Skulski 03:37
Hmmm.
Adam Huggins 03:37
It's part and parcel.
Shane Mahoney 03:38
What can you say about this history? I mean, you can say it was repeated all over the place all over the world and different times and categories. But the truth of the matter is, it was brutal, fiendish and simply hard to imagine, for most of us today. And what's even harder to imagine, of course, is that we have manifestations of those parameters and attitudes and feelings that are repeated up until the present time.
Mendel Skulski 04:07
Yeah, I'll cosign that. There's subtle and not so subtle echoes of colonization everywhere.
Adam Huggins 04:14
Yeah, it's an ongoing process. And I think we've discussed it a lot on Future Ecologies. We're going to discuss it today. Not in the negative but from this perspective of a bright spot. And that bright spot is right here in coastal British Columbia. So with that, I have two introductions for you.
Douglas Neasloss 04:34
Yeah, my name is Muq'vas Glaw, which means White Bear in my language. My other name is Doug Neasloss. I work as the elected chief as well as the stewardship director for the Kitasoo Xai'xais nation on the central coast of BC.
Kyle Artelle 04:44
And I'm Kyle Artelle. I live in W̓u̓íƛ̓itx̌v Haíɫzaqv or Haíɫzaqv / Heiltsuk territory, just south of Kitasoo Xai'xais territory where Doug is today. I'm of European descent. I'm an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Victoria and a biologist with Raincoast Conservation foundation.
Adam Huggins 05:01
So Heiltsuk and Kitasoo Xai'xais territory is part of what is now popularly known as the Great Bear Rainforest. You heard of it?
Mendel Skulski 05:09
I have heard of the Great Bear Rainforest. That's basically like, pretty much all of coastal BC north of Vancouver Island.
Adam Huggins 05:17
Yeah. And Doug lives in the community of Klemtu.
Douglas Neasloss 05:20
Oh, yeah, Klemtu is a small community on the central coast. It's home to about 350 people, we have two different nations that live here. And we're surrounded by some massive fjords out to the east where all the grizzly bears are, and islands on the outside where the Kitasoo people are from. And that's where we get some of the largest populations of spirit bears.
Mendel Skulski 05:39
I've heard of spirit bears. What are they exactly?
Adam Huggins 05:42
Yeah, Spirit bears are black bears with a rare recessive allele that gives them a white coat. So they kind of look like miniature polar bears. They only occur in this part of the world, mostly just on a few islands. But black bears and spirit bears aren't the only bears out there. The Great Bear Rainforest is also home to the grizzly bear — who, even as the apex predator of the system, are vulnerable to hunting by people.
Douglas Neasloss 06:08
So I used to be a bear guide. I started up an ecotourism operation here in my community. I had some guests from all around the world. And my job was to go and take them and show them the beauty of the culture and the wildlife and the territory. You know, we were trying to build a thriving business in our backyard. And this must have been around 2004. I just remember, we saw something in the water, it looked like maybe it was a dead seal. We could just see something dark. And so we all walked over. It was the first time I found a dead grizzly bear and his head was chopped off, his fur was gone. Someone had shot it for sport. That's what I learned more about trophy hunting, and there was the industry where people come and shoot something for a sport. And I just thought that violated everything we were taught and our culture — to have respect. Violates our values. Violates everything we believe in. So that totally transformed my life, and set me on a path to try and do something about it.
Adam Huggins 07:05
What Doug did in response to this experience — that's what today's episode is all about. It's an incredible success story that I think can show us another way to think about wildlife conservation. So from Future Ecologies, this is Model Citizens, part two: Bearly Legal.
Mendel Skulski 07:24
Oh my god... [laughs] I can't believe you've done this. That title... is unbearable.
Adam Huggins 07:36
Just bear with me okay.
Mendel Skulski 07:39
Nooo!
Introduction Voiceover 07:40
Broadcasting from the unseeded shared and asserted territories of the Penelakut, Hwlitsum, and Lelum Sar Augh Ta Naogh, and other Hul'qumi'num speaking peoples. This is Future Ecologies — exploring the shape of our world through ecology, design and sound.
Adam Huggins 08:29
All right, so last episode, we were back in the late 1800s. This episode we are back in the early 2000s. We have this regulated trophy hunt of grizzly bears in British Columbia at the time. By and large, it seems like this is something that the NAM does accommodate and support. But for Doug, something about all of this felt wrong.
Douglas Neasloss 08:51
At that time the province had a legal obligation to protect grizzly bear habitat. And I remember the province sent over these grizzly bear habitat maps, and they were missing all the islands. There wasn't one island a part of their population for grizzly bears. And so as a bear guide for over 10 years, I phoned the province and I said "you guys are missing big chunks of data — there's grizzly bears all over the islands." They said "What evidence do you have?" And I said "Oh, I've got video, I have photo, I have GPS" I said "what do you guys want? I'll send it over." They said "you know Doug, some people don't know the difference between a grizzly bear and a black bear." Well, you know, I'd been working with bears for at that point, probably 15 years because I used to be a creek walker for salmon as well. They basically said "you're not a scientist, you're not a biologist, you can't be making this sort of allegations."
Mendel Skulski 09:34
Maybe that shouldn't be as shocking as it is... but it is.
Adam Huggins 09:39
Yeah, we're kind of already seeing where principle 6 of the NAM, which is that science should direct wildlife management.
Mendel Skulski 09:48
It's whose science.
Adam Huggins 09:50
Right. it can be weaponized to discredit local and Indigenous knowledge.
Kyle Artelle 09:56
Doug doesn't only know the difference between a black and a grizzly bear, but he knows them individually. That's John, and that's Frank or whatever. And Frank is Sam's son, or whatnot. And so this idea that the response would be, you know, "you're not a scientist, so you're probably seeing black bears" is absurd, because it wasn't just that he saw a grizzly bear, he probably knew which grizzly bear that was. Science is supposed to be transparent, science is supposed to be open. So when sort of the claim of science is used as a blunt instrument, politically, of course, it runs against respectful conduct with anyone. But it also goes against sort of the tenets of science itself.
Adam Huggins 10:33
This was a red flag for Doug — for how grizzly bear populations and this grizzly bear hunt in particular were being managed in the province. And his counterparts in the neighboring Central Coast First Nations had seen some red flags of their own. So in 2012, the Kitasoo Xai'xais, Heiltsuk, Wuikinuxv, and Nuxalk nations came together to issue a collective ban on grizzly bear hunting in their territories.
Douglas Neasloss 10:57
We launched a press release, and we said "Trophy hunting is banned based on Indigenous law. Don't waste your money coming here to hunt. Because we'll do something about it — we'll see you on the water." And it was really some of the first times I've seen people ban something based on Indigenous laws.
Adam Huggins 11:13
In so doing, they immediately run afoul of several principles of the North American model, especially those that stipulate that the capital S state, in this case, the Canadian state has the authority over managing and allocating wildlife. And of course, they run afoul of the state's interpretation of its own authority.
Douglas Neasloss 11:31
It ruffled a lot of feathers: we had death threats, people were very upset about it. And some people were confused about it. Some people said "the Indians just want the money for themselves." We try to explain to people it wasn't about Indigenous or non Indigenous, it was about how we treat wildlife, it was about bears. So when we launched our ban on the bear hunt, we had a response from the province and they said First Nations don't have the authority to issue such a ban. Of course, on the First Nations side, we think we do. We've always had a stewardship responsibility to take care of our territory, take care of wildlife. The province came out with their predictable response. They said the hunt is based on sound science, they can take a certain percentage of the population without affecting the overall population, even though they don't do any research.
Adam Huggins 12:15
And so to address this issue, Doug and the Kitasoo Xai'xais, along with the other member nations of the newly formed Central Coast bear working group, started working with Kyle and other scientists, with the support of Raincoast and the David Suzuki foundation, to really dig into the science that the province was using to justify the grizzly bear hunt.
Kyle Artelle 12:34
The province had long maintained "say what you will about the ethics of the hunt. It's based in science, it's based in science." And so we took a look at the science underpinning the hunt. And what we found pretty quickly, when we were examining how the hunt was administered is that there was quite a bit of uncertainty. So for example, it isn't known with high certainty how many bears there even are — here or anywhere in the province. It isn't known how many bears are poached. It's known that there's a high poaching rate, but it's not known exactly how much that is. And it isn't known how fast populations grow, which is a really important thing to know when you're when you're figuring out how many you can sustainably hunt from any population without causing the population to decline.
Adam Huggins 13:18
Kyle says that this lack of scientific rigor on the part of the management authority isn't limited to the Great Bear Rainforest, not by a longshot.
Kyle Artelle 13:27
We did a review of the claim of the model that science is the proper tool to discharge policy, which is a great way to describe it — discharg is right in that name, right? I mean, the science is coming right down a barrel. But anyways, we were looking across all states and provinces in Canada in the US, to look for some of what you might expect to see in management that's truly science based. So just looking at that particular tenant, and found that by and large things that you might expect, such as clear objectives, such as transparency in what you're doing, and evidence — whether you're using evidence — we looked to see whether these particular attributes were evident from hunt management plans. And we looked at over 1000 hunt management plans from across these jurisdictions and found that again, by and large, these were lacking. In fact, in most cases, most of the criteria we were looking for were lacking.
Adam Huggins 14:21
So coming back to the Great Bear Rainforest, Kyle and Doug and their team released their findings.
Kyle Artelle 14:26
So the take-home message to that was basically, there's a lot of risk currently to hunted bears because of uncertainty and population sizes, poaching rates, and growth rates. But what we found though, is you could set quotas that take into account all of those uncertainties and protect against overharvest,
Adam Huggins 14:44
Which, according to their research, would require the reduction of the existing grizzly bear quotas. by 83%
Kyle Artelle 14:51
And a full third of the province, you could not have any hunt at all — the uncertainty was just too high to have any certainty you aren't killing too many bears.
Adam Huggins 14:59
So that assessment came out in 2013, and...
Kyle Artelle 15:03
The province actually responded by increasing quotas not decreasing them.
Mendel Skulski 15:07
What?
Douglas Neasloss 15:09
And then they said "the trophy hunt was based on economics. Trophy hunting is an important part of British Columbia's economy." And they were trying to say it was worth $350 million to the province of British Columbia. That was all animals that was every animal. So we asked them, well, what are bears worth in the Great Bear Rainforest? And they couldn't tell us that.
Mendel Skulski 15:26
...It's based on economics, but we have no idea what those economics actually are...
Adam Huggins 15:35
I think the province was saying the science is good and there's economic benefits. And you know, Kyle and Doug and their team had discredited that first argument. And now, they moved on to the second argument. That second argument is kind of another core idea of the North American model that the revenues from hunting provide economic benefits to communities and ecosystems, right?
Mendel Skulski 15:58
Sure.
Adam Huggins 15:58
So Doug and the Kitasoo Xai'xais, they get a team from Stanford University's Center for Responsible Travel to do an economic analysis of the grizzly bear hunt.
Douglas Neasloss 16:07
And they blew the government numbers out of the water, they basically said that the government actually spends more money managing the hunt than they actually make on the hunt; That tourism is way more valuable, bringing in $15.2 million, compared to the $1.1 million from the trophy hunt and the resident hunt combined. So they had no economic argument to stand on
Mendel Skulski 16:25
Their ecological science found lacking, their economic argument falsified. You have to look at this thing, and you have to think, like, why are they so dug in? Presumably, because policymakers are attached to the North American wildlife model as being the thing which supports conservation.
Adam Huggins 16:47
Yeah, that could be one reason. It's hard to get inside the minds of policymakers, per se. But it's clear that that cultural attachment to hunting being a part of our conservation model, and that, like, species that aren't hunted are somehow less conserved is in there, right? It's in the mix. And here's Doug and Kyle, they're essentially hacking away at the economic and scientific justifications for the hunting of grizzly bears in the province. And it's not clear that there's any hunting benefit to conserving this species, unless you count reduced interactions between bears and the general public, which is kind of a circular argument. So all you're really left with are kind of the political and cultural justifications that we were discussing. And Doug wasn't having any of those.
Douglas Neasloss 17:32
I mean, wildlife is an extremely important part of our culture. It's in our songs and our dances, in our stories and our clan systems. So wildlife are very much ingrained in who we are. And we have a lot of respect, we have relationships with wildlife. That's something we want to be able to share. But first nations have never had an opportunity to have a say in wildlife management. Other governments like the provincial and federal governments develop their rules and regulations, and they leave us out. Now if you take something like the Wildlife Act, it was developed in the late 1800s by hunters for hunters, with very little conservation mandate and no First Nations input. And that's still true for 2022. To me, the bear hunt issue for us was larger than bears. Of course, we have a lot of respect for bears, but it was also about Indigenous law. While it took a number of years, public pressure to end the hunt grew, and eventually the new BC NDP government ended the hunting of grizzly bears across the province, categorically, in 2017 — including in the Great Bear Rainforest, where of course the Central Coast First Nations had already banned it in 2012.
Mendel Skulski 18:40
We hereby second this ban.
Adam Huggins 18:43
Yes, it took them a while, but they came around. And Doug says that there's been a huge improvement, especially for the tourism industry, which allows Kitasoo Xai'xais to offer high quality employment to people of all ages and genders, and brings in about $2.5 million in annual revenue for his small community.
Douglas Neasloss 19:01
I've seen a huge change in my lifetime. I remember when I first started guiding when trophy hunting was big, and all these trophy hunters would come and blast all the bears. So we would roll in with our little tourism operation, and you will see the bum of a bear running away. They associated boats with hunting. So you would be very lucky if you can get a glimpse of a bear before it ran off. You can sit there and watch a bear for hours now. It's been night and day.
Mendel Skulski 19:26
That's so sweet. It's so amazing that those animals can be re habituated so quickly.
Adam Huggins 19:35
Yeah.
Mendel Skulski 19:35
Yeah. What difference it makes when we make an honest attempt to coexist.
Adam Huggins 19:40
And, you know, I guess what seems clear is that the population of bears, at least at this point has not suffered for lack of hunting. Also, Doug told me that the end of the hunt is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what's going on in wildlife management across the territories of the Central Coast First Nations,
Douglas Neasloss 19:59
Each one of our communities have set up a stewardship office. It's dedicated to stewardship, which is pretty cool. So we are driving everything from the land use planning to marine use planning, we're driving science, we have watchmen programs, we have language programs, we're building capacity within our communities to drive the science. We're doing everything from rockfish research to sea cucumber research, mountain goat research, bear research, salmon research. So we are investing a lot of time and effort into stewardship and sustainability.
Adam Huggins 20:28
And all of this research, and revival of traditional knowledge, and investment and proactive management, Kyle says that it's really paying off.
Kyle Artelle 20:37
Looking at grizzly bear stewardship among Central Coast First Nations is a really incredible example of international collaboration among Wuikinuxv, Kitasoo Xai'xais, Heiltsuk, and nations coming together for this huge research project. On top of the things that we've already talked about, in Nuxalk nation (so Bella Coola Valley), there's this amazing bright spot for bear human coexistence. I've spent a lot of time in the literature looking at approaches to dealing with bear human conflict. And I haven't come across such an amazing, holistic, successful approach to dealing with that conflict with bears anywhere else. When bears come into people's yards in the Bella Coola Valley, Jay Moody and his Bear Safe group, they'll go — they'll address all the attractants, you know, if there's fish guts, they'll take them out and they'll go compost them. If there's a fruit tree, they'll put an electric fence around it. They'll talk with the landowners and explain what's happening, and work with them to come up with a solution. They'll put on a Nuxalk radio so that it sounds like someone's home. If a fish has been stolen, you know, if an elder gets a fish stolen by a bear as part of the conflict, they'll work to replace that fish. Like, they address this whole conflict from all these different dimensions. And the bears there do not reoffend. When Bear Safe crew has gone there and dealt with a bear conflict in someone's yard. The bears don't come back. It's addressed.
Mendel Skulski 22:04
I love this like restorative justice angle for bear-human interactions, right? Like when things go wrong, we can fix them.
Adam Huggins 22:13
That's such an interesting way to put it. It is kind of like a restorative justice framework where the end point of the process is not one of the parties to the conflict is dead.
Mendel Skulski 22:21
Right, yeah. It's not punitive.
Adam Huggins 22:24
Yeah, I think that's a good way to describe it. And if you remember back to the last episode, where we're talking with Mark Elbroch about the challenges faced by people who are trying to conserve mountain lions, these are exactly the kinds of solutions and cultural changes that I think he was talking about, that could be implemented to address those kinds of conflicts as well. And just so there's no misunderstanding here, the folks up in the Great Bear Rainforest, They're not against hunting, not by a longshot.
Kyle Artelle 22:51
Absolutely. I mean, this isn't an anti-hunting sentiment, by any stretch of the imagination. I think that there's probably more wild protein consumed here than in most places in North America. So it's not an anti-hunting thing. But the approach to taking care of wildlife here, of other species, was just so much... so much more suited to place, so much better suited to the wildlife. Because what has existed here for millennia, has worked for millennia.
Adam Huggins 23:20
So what we can learn from their approach after the break.
Mendel Skulski 23:34
Hey, folks, I want to level with you. A lot of work goes into making this podcast. We don't do news stories, because each episode is the product of months, sometimes years of research, interviews, writing, scoring, and sound design. We've had some amazing help along the way, from guest producers, so many musicians, remote recordists and other collaborators. But the team here at Future Ecologies is still just Adam and I. Plus, Adam somehow has another full time job at the Galliano Conservancy. I have no idea where he finds the time. We make this podcast because we think there are people who need to hear it — to hear stories that change how we orient ourselves, individually and collectively, as humans in nature. You might be one of them. Then we produce the hell out of it — to the limits of our abilities — because we want it to be memorable, musical, and above all, fun to listen to. Then we give it away for free, because we think that's just the way it needs to be. This show is for everyone. And maybe someday this won't be such an absurd business model. But as of right now, just over 200 incredible people are helping us make this podcast. You can meet them all at futureecologies.net/patrons. Our patrons get a whole other podcast feed for early episode releases, and other bonus audio, like extended interviews, behind the scenes live AMAs, and a little pile of mini episodes on mushrooms and seaweeds. Plus stickers, patches, and a Discord server where we hang out, share stuff and get to know each other. So let me ask you this. Is this episode worth $1 to you? Be honest, you listened this far, and you heard it for free. But would you pay $1 so that someone else could hear it too? If 50% — just half — of everyone listening said yes, not only would we completely stave off the precarity of an indie media existence, but we could hire a third producer full time. Meaning more, better, Future Ecologies for all. So if you like what we're up to, please support it. You can do so for as little as $1 a month. Just go to futureecologies.net/patrons. Okay, back to the show.
Adam Huggins 26:25
And we are back.
Mendel Skulski 26:26
We're back!
Adam Huggins 26:26
Yep. I'm Adam.
Mendel Skulski 26:28
Mendel.
Adam Huggins 26:28
And this is Future Ecologies, where we do the bear minimum to keep you informed about what's going on in the more than human world.
Mendel Skulski 26:36
That's enough. That is the bear maximum of puns.
Adam Huggins 26:41
Today, we're learning from folks up in the Great Bear Rainforest, about new approaches to managing wildlife resources.
Mendel Skulski 26:48
Resources in air quotes.
Adam Huggins 26:50
Yeah, to decolonize some of that language that I think, you know, we might associate with the North American model, how about how to better reestablish relationships with our more than human kin? Anyway, two different ways of saying the same thing.
Mendel Skulski 27:05
More life for more things
Adam Huggins 27:07
Right. Kyle and Doug and their colleagues have actually written up their own set of seven principles for how to do this. It's set up in sort of opposition to the NAM, but Kyle says it's not meant to be a prescriptive model.
Kyle Artelle 27:21
What we are not doing here is dictating how communities should interact with wildlife, or how Indigenous nations should interact with wildlife. Folks are going to know what's best for their own communities, what's best for their own nations. And there's governance systems that have existed for millennia that are quite well adapted to governing their ecosystem. So where this model comes in is more giving tenets of how decolonial governance contrasts to the more colonial model such as a North American model. And it also provides guidance on those wishing to support decolonized management.
Adam Huggins 27:57
And why you might ask...
Mendel Skulski 27:59
Why?
Adam Huggins 28:00
— is it specifically a decolonial model?
Mendel Skulski 28:03
Why is it specifically a decolonial model?
Adam Huggins 28:05
You're so well behaved.
Kyle Artelle 28:08
I think one of the problems with the North American model is that it does seek to dictate a one-size-fits-all approach to interacting with wildlife that is centralized and led by the state, you know, whether that's a province in Canada or a state in the States. Sovereignty, rights and title, the jurisdiction of communities and nations is completely inseparable from conservation writ large. So you can't even talk about conservation, or stewardship, or land use without addressing whose land is it in the first place? In Canada and across North America, right, all of these states and provinces have been imposed on top of Indigenous territories.
Mendel Skulski 28:45
Well put.
Adam Huggins 28:46
And so the fundamental argument is that the NAM, by virtue of its erasure of Indigenous peoples, basically disqualifies itself. It can't be amended.
Kyle Artelle 28:56
It's not about slightly evolving the North American model: so how do we take this centralized approach and tweak it here and there in order to better incorporate various perspectives, or whatnot. But that really to have an appropriate approach to governance, it's really about Doug knows best what what works well for Kitasoo Xai'xais, right? The province doesn't, just just to put that bluntly. The province could potentially support that work, but that that would be a very different model if the province was saying "Hey, Doug, how can we help what's happening?"
Mendel Skulski 29:25
Hmmm. Okay, enough stalling. You said you have seven new principles.
Adam Huggins 29:31
Yep.
Mendel Skulski 29:32
Let's hear them.
Adam Huggins 29:32
Sure. The nice thing is I don't really have to explain them because they're kind of self explanatory. In the paper that they recently published on this new model, they come with some really nice illustrations. Okay, principle one: Stewardship of resources is inseparable from the rights title, responsibilities, self-determination, and sovereignty of Indigenous peoples.
Mendel Skulski 29:53
Bam, there it is.
Adam Huggins 29:55
Number two: practitioners steward interconnections among species, people and their environments.
Mendel Skulski 30:00
Okay, so it's not each individualized group of animals or plants. It's how they're connected.
Adam Huggins 30:07
Yeah. Which is sort of the definition of ecology. I guess. We're stewarding ecologies instead of species.
Mendel Skulski 30:13
Right.
Adam Huggins 30:14
Principle three: all available knowledge sources are considered and respected.
Mendel Skulski 30:18
Not just capital S science.
Adam Huggins 30:21
Principle four: environmental stewardship is placed-based, centered on communities, with collaborations with other governments as appropriate. The state is a supporting actor to the local communities, if desired.
Mendel Skulski 30:34
If.
Adam Huggins 30:35
Principle five: practices reflect, support, and/or are led by local governance structures and legal systems. So total relocalization of governance here. Principle six: practices reflect local values and worldviews. And principles seven: governance recognizes respects and addresses the cultural importance of species and places. So what's your reaction to these principles? In comparison to the seven principles of the NAM.
Mendel Skulski 31:14
I find it a lot easier to relate to these principles — that so much about ecology is so context specific. And of course, it feels self evident that the people who have the most insight into how to negotiate those relationships effectively are people who have been on that land for a long time. Maybe it's not up to us to imbue that authority, but we can at least acknowledge it. And we can ask the state to acknowledge it as well, right?
Adam Huggins 31:40
Yeah. And Kyle actually, like, speaks directly to that, in talking about this model that they've proposed here. Right, it puts a lot of emphasis on local self-determination. I guess the devil's advocate argument would be like, if you totally give control over to local communities that could result in really bad outcomes for wildlife in some places, right? And Kyle says, you know, either way, that's the point.
Kyle Artelle 32:04
Certainly, there's millennia, again, of evidence that the governance systems in place, before centralized industrial colonial systems were imposed, better sustained people and ecosystems alike. But that said, it's critical to realize that people's rights are not contingent on getting a certain outcome that we want. So we can't say "yes, you know, Indigenous peoples have the right to govern their own resources, as long as they do it the way that I think they should." Eco-colonialism is the term that's given for that, when you have conservation groups that are happy to support Indigenous sovereignty and Indigenous rights, as long as nations make decisions that these outside people think are appropriate. So we try to make very clear, this isn't an end to a means. It's not okay, support Indigenous authority, and Indigenous sovereignty, rights, title, because you'll get more hectares of land protected. That's a really damaging viewpoint, right? That Indigenous rights, title, you know, human rights are pre existing and stand alone, and the requirement to uphold those rights is not contingent on anything else.
Mendel Skulski 33:14
It's such an important point, like if your ally ship, and your support for indigenous sovereignty, is conditional on the outcome that you want, or the cars that you personally support. It's not really about indigenous sovereignty. You're just treating that as a vehicle to get what you want?
Adam Huggins 33:32
Yeah, I think Kyle makes that point. And I think it emphasizes that we have a lot of evidence that Indigenous knowledge has been extremely successful. Much more so than I think anyone can make an argument for the more recent and short-lived models that we have today.
Mendel Skulski 33:48
Right.
Adam Huggins 33:48
So obviously, to these two settlers with this podcast, this seems like an important foundation for moving forward. But that perspective might be hard to swallow, especially for some non-Indigenous communities that have lived off the land for generations. Or for some conservation groups who are deeply invested in the democracy of consumptive users.
Kyle Artelle 34:10
How that is generally interpreted on the ground is that all British Columbians have access to all British Columbian wildlife. And that, of course, erases indigenous sovereignty of their own territories.
Adam Huggins 34:21
So democracy of hunting, maybe. But then again, maybe not. Under the decolonial approach, it would depend on the local community.
Mendel Skulski 34:31
I don't know. It's ridiculous to me to think that like, oh, yeah, I have the same claim to hunt an elk in the Peace as someone who lives up there.
Adam Huggins 34:39
Yeah. But I've spent some time scrolling through hunting forums. It's clear that many non-Indigenous hunters think that Indigenous people already get privileged access to wildlife, and that's against the principles of the NAM. Ideally, everybody should be equal in the North American model universe. It's true that in many jurisdictions, there are regulations that Indigenous peoples are exempted from. But the big picture, as we discussed in the last episode, is that what we know about the depletion of wildlife populations across North America is that that came largely from the result of market commodification of wild animals in settler colonial society.
Mendel Skulski 35:14
Right.
Adam Huggins 35:15
And this depletion we kind of hinted at that in the last episode, but it had catastrophic effects on Indigenous lifeways and economies — well documented. Those lifeways in economies were based in large part on wild animals. Meanwhile, Indigenous people are left out of the conservation movement. And as hunting and fishing become more regulated, their traditional harvesting activities on the land were often criminalized. You know, from Doug's perspective, his community is just fighting for a small piece of what used to be the lifeblood of his nation.
Douglas Neasloss 35:45
I'll give you an example. I've been working on eight years on a crab file. There was 56 Crowd bays in my territory. And the commercial and the recreational industry had access to 100% of it. So my community is trying to say "well, listen, by the time our small boats can get out there, there's nothing left. Because the commercial guys will come in and set their 400 traps, let them soak for 18 days. The recreational guys, which no one keeps a tab on — so that could be 50 boats, or they could be 1500 boats. So by the time we get up there, yeah, there's no crab." We've had to prove that was no crab, spending $100,000s on research. And I remember one of the comments from one of the industry folks, they said "if the First Nations get one crab area, we're gonna protest". I thought, wow, we're sitting here trying to fight for a few little bays for ourselves, to feed our community, to make sure that people have food here.
Adam Huggins 36:33
That isn't an idle threat, right? You might remember a recent example of this kind of conflict in 2020, around the lobster fishery in Mi'kmaq territory, Nova Scotia. In that case, non-Indigenous lobster fishers and community members reacted threateningly, and in some cases violently, to a First Nation launching a small, sustainable, offseason fishery.
News Announcer 1 36:58
Good evening and thank you for joining us. There is a disturbing development in the escalating violence of an Indigenous lobster fishery in Nova Scotia
News Announcer 2 37:05
Last night, 200 non-Indigenous commercial fishermen gathered outside a lobster pound. This Indigenous fisherman says he barricaded himself inside.
Mi'kmaq Fisherman 37:15
They said they won't let me leave unless they have my lobsters.
News Announcer 1 37:19
A lobster pound being used by Mi'kmaq fishers has been completely destroyed by fire. This is all that's left of the facility.
News Announcer 3 37:26
A supreme court ruling 21 years ago upheld Indigenous fishers right to earn a so-called "moderate livelihood" outside of regular seasons,
News Announcer 2 37:35
but no rules were established as to how that should be implemented. That's led to standoffs on the warf for weeks.
News Announcer 3 37:42
With each violent episode, calls for peace become more urgent. Investigations continue into a slew of other incidents, including this — the most troubling episode yet.
Adam Huggins 37:52
The fundamental disagreement is over who has the authority to determine access to wildlife, right? The NAM would say that the state does. And the decolonial model would put that power in local control. And in many cases, this would vest it in indigenous communities. So for Doug, going along with the NAM is just no longer acceptable.
Douglas Neasloss 38:12
Yeah, I just see so many flaws in this model of management. There's a lack of science, there's a lack of management plans, there's a lack of enforcement agencies, there's a lack of First Nations input. If you have people in Victoria or Nanaimo that manage our wildlife, people that have never been here, never stepped foot in our territory. They'll sit there and allocate the wildlife to all these different user groups with zero information.
Mendel Skulski 38:37
This is one of the essential things that has led to revolution in the past, right, this idea that the people making decisions about how you live your life have no point of contact with that. There's no representation within your community. There's no power invested in those places — it's all exported. If that's threatening your ability to eat... that's like a critical issue, and nothing else really matters. And that's come to a head before. I wonder if we can negotiate that more gently?
Adam Huggins 39:08
Well, I mean, that's why we have this decolonial model that Kyle and Doug and their colleagues have articulated, that basically says, you know, the North American model, we need to completely throw this out. Maybe it worked for some species, and for some people for some amount of time, but it's no longer an appropriate or acceptable way to manage our relationships with the more-than-human world, and probably never was. And reading this, I can see that influence of living in a small rural community, and what that kind of intimate relationship with nature does to you, you know, does to a culture. And you know who else grew up in a small rural community?
Mendel Skulski 39:52
Who?
Adam Huggins 39:53
Shane. Shane Mahoney. He grew up in rural Newfoundland.
Shane Mahoney 39:57
I know what rural people come to know about things. I saw it, I grew up with it. And that was over generations going back 300 or 400 years.
Adam Huggins 40:08
And this perspective gives him a lot of respect for local and traditional knowledge.
Shane Mahoney 40:12
It's easy for me to imagine, as a result of my experience, what 6000 years of knowledge means, what 12,000 years of knowledge, or 15,000 years of knowledge.
Adam Huggins 40:28
That perspective also means that he too would like to see local communities have more say over how wildlife is managed.
Shane Mahoney 40:34
I would love to see local, rural, Newfoundland communities have more say over resources. I argued when I was in government that we ought to give isolated communities in particular land to manage for food production, because we know how to grow snowshoe hare and we know how to grow moose.
Mendel Skulski 40:50
Snowshoe and moose? Like, moose the animal? We can grow moose? Cool. What's snowshoe?
Adam Huggins 40:55
Snowshoe hares.
Shane Mahoney 40:57
They're weed species: we can grow them, we can create explosions in them. So I've long been in favor of giving local people more say.
Adam Huggins 41:07
And if it sounds like Shane is hungry, it's because he is, in a way. He feels strongly that food can be at the center of resolving some of these disagreements among like-minded people. And in some ways, I think it's actually a bit of a departure from the NAM, because the North American model is based on this system of regulated fair chase and sportsmanlike hunting. This form of hunting has more or less eliminated market hunting, but it also marginalized subsistence hunting and the economies of Indigenous and rural people. If you look at the NAM from the perspective of somebody hunting for food to feed their family or community, then why the hell would you care about sportsmanship or fair chase? You're just trying to eat — and the Teddy Roosevelt's of the world are telling you that, you know you're doing it wrong. And by the way, they think that they deserve the same access to your food sources as you do — for their sport. So, Shane, with his company Conservation Bisions, has started something called the Wild Harvest Initiative,
Shane Mahoney 42:16
The Wild Harvest Initiative was an attempt to transcend the differences amongst people by finding a common language that we could all speak and we all care about. That wasn't science. And it wasn't climate change. I needed something much, much more fundamental to bridge this dialogue. That's food. Natural food, sustainable food, healthy food, and also foods that you touch — that you have a personal investment in. Whether that's growing vegetables, picking your own berries, planting your own meat, raising your own chickens. This is real. And I wanted to convince people that the sustainable use of wild foods is not a sideshow. It involves billions of people, if you include world fisheries, for example. And if we thought about landscapes primarily as food provisioning systems — by we, I mean society — it would fundamentally change almost everything. So what is he proposing?
Adam Huggins 43:19
Well, right now, he's working with states and provinces to try to figure out just exactly how much wild food is being harvested and consumed by families in North America, because nobody really knows. He wouldn't share any numbers with me just yet, because he's working on a long time sample. But he says it's a whole lot.
Shane Mahoney 43:42
I will tell you that there literally are billions of meals being provided. And you have some idea then, about what this is worth.
Adam Huggins 43:50
And once he figures out how much food is being provided, right, how much wild food people are eating, and their day to day lives, he has some questions.
Shane Mahoney 43:59
What would happen if we stopped these activities? What will be the ecological cost of replacing all that wild food? And secondly, to ask the question, Well, is it possible for us to very substantively increase the production of wild foods?
Adam Huggins 44:15
I think that this last question is really interesting. And I think it's something that Kyle and Doug would also see a lot of value in because of the importance of wild, traditional food to coastal communities.
Shane Mahoney 44:29
I want to open people's eyes to these kinds of possibilities. Because, in my view, while we can't ever assume that we can feed the world only on what is produced in the wild any longer, I think we could do a much better job of that at a local, regional, and even at national and international levels, if we really tried. And I'm interested in really trying, because as somebody who values his own wild foods a great deal, and who grew up in a culture where that was extremely important, I also know how it changes people's views, how it shapes people's views if they are providing for themselves in a direct way.
Adam Huggins 45:13
One of the changes that he brought to my attention that's really stuck with me is that we're much more likely to share wild food.
Shane Mahoney 45:21
Whether it's berries for our grandmother's pie, or whether it's a moose we harvest for our own meat, we are compelled to share. We are not compelled to share the foods we buy. So this tells us something about the profound nature of this.
Adam Huggins 45:38
If I'm harvesting wild food, I'm so much more likely to want to share it with other people, or to enjoy it with other people. And I've had I've had so much of that kind of food shared with me, in a way that with store bought food, it's just not the same. And it took me a while to realize this, but for Shane, while he does care deeply about wildlife, you know, he's dedicated his career to it, he also cares just as much about local human cultures and his own community.
Shane Mahoney 46:10
You take rural Newfoundlanders, out of their fishing, bird hunting, moose hunting, seal, hunting context. and even if they live on the same island, they're not the same.
Adam Huggins 46:32
So I'm sitting there talking to Shane, and I'm thinking about how I'm having this kind of two-way conversation with people who are living on opposite coasts of this huge country that we call Canada. You've got Shane in Newfoundland, Doug in Klemtu, Kyle in Bella Bella, and me over here on Galiano. And we're all just people living in these small rural island communities, who want to preserve the ability to live alongside wild animals, and, you know, occasionally to eat them. All the rest of this stuff about the NAM, it's... it's just kind of in the way, in some ways. Like, I don't want to gloss over the disagreements in this episode. If you put all of the folks we've interviewed in a room together, I'm certain that there would be some disagreements, and certainly different approaches. Some of those differences might be truly substantial, or even foundational, some of them might be just in terms of the way things are articulated — which audience they're speaking to. I don't want to gloss over those disagreements. But everyone we've spoken to here loves and values the more-than-human world, and wants a place for human beings within it. And so what I'm going to do for the end of this episode is just to cede the floor to these three people, and give them the closing thoughts. Because I think you've heard enough of mine
Mendel Skulski 47:55
Works for me.
Kyle Artelle 47:56
Sometimes in wildlife research, it becomes a real bean counting exercise, you know: How many animals are there on the landscape? How fast is the population growing? How fast is it shrinking? And this is an important dimension for sure. But I think that sometimes when we only look at populations as numbers on an Excel spreadsheet, we kind of lose perspective of the fact that these are actually individuals on the landscape — that are family units, that have lives. When we think about things like the North American model, or when we think about conservation in general, that we recognize that is one story, but there's 1000s out there. And there's very different ways of looking at things. There's very different ways of governing things. And I think that the more that we can recognize that and the more that we can support and uphold people on the ground, who have these much deeper relationships with places and with species, and who have the right to govern their own lands and territories. I think the benefits will be for all.
Shane Mahoney 48:56
So I've long been in favor of giving local people more say, but there is an inherent challenge. And it is true everywhere. Communities need capacity. Conservation is an incredibly complicated piece of business: economics, politics, culture, science, local knowledge, ecology, climate change. I mean, instead of being the simplest thing, which some people seem to talk about it like it is it's the most complicated adventure in life.
Douglas Neasloss 49:29
We learn a lot just from watching wildlife, you know, and wildlife have given us so much. We learned how to survive, and in our stories it's the bears that taught us how to survive — what roots to eat, what berries to eat, how to eat the salmon. Things like bears, I think have a really important service that they offer their aerating the soil so that more nutrients can grow, so you get productive estuaries. They're eating the salmon, they're taking it into the woods, and that salmon is decomposing into the soil, into the roots of the tree where you're getting nitrogen 15 that's producing massive old growth forests. And so my people always say everything is connected. And it is. People say you can't talk about bears without talking about salmon. Because if you remove the salmon, you remove the bear. If you remove the bear, you remove the forest. And so everything's connected. My elders always say to me "you can develop all the management plans you want. You can draw a circle on a map, but it doesn't protect anything." They said "People do. So get your own people out there and protect it."
Shane Mahoney 50:23
I'll leave you with one small anecdote. I met a man his name was Louis Melvin. 40 years older than I was, and he was a big fish. Big fish killer, as we say here. Like a lot of rural Newfoundland fishermen, he hated whales. And he hated whales, because the whales, particularly the big whales, the humpbacks, they got in his cod trap, of course. And when they got in, they went into a frenzy, and couldn't get out, and they tore it to pieces. And these are massive things. You need three to four boats to set them out. And so he would lose the season. So he really hated whales. After he finally gave up fishing, he was 78/79. That's when he came out of an open boat. I caught him down at the end of his garden, one day in June. We have schools of fish that come in here called capelin that come in in massive numbers. And the whales and the fish come in behind them, feeding on them and so on. And the whales will come in right next to the beaches, and they'll turn on their sides to fit as much of these fish in, and then blow them through their baleen plates. Anyway, Louis was down there. He was fairly deaf at that time. And I hit him and said "What are you doing, Louis?" He said "I'm watching the whales." I said "I thought you didn't like whales, Louis." And he looked at me and he said "Shane, they were only like us. We were all chasing fish." If he could invent a completely new philosophy of nature, then I think it's possible for all of us.
Adam Huggins 52:23
A quick note at the end of this episode, in March of 2022, the BC NDP government introduced Bill 14 to amend the Wildlife Act, in order to quote "ensure greater collaboration and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in the management of wildlife in the province" unquote. It remains to be seen how this amendment impacts the dynamics we discussed in this episode, and we'll be watching.
Mendel Skulski 52:53
Future Ecologies is an independent production, made possible by our supporters on Patreon. For citations and a transcript of this episode, visit us at futureecologies.net
Adam Huggins 53:09
This episode was produced by myself, Adam Huggins
Mendel Skulski 53:12
And me. Mendel Skulski.
Adam Huggins 53:14
It features the voices of Shane Mahoney, Douglas Neasloss, and Kyle Artelle.
Mendel Skulski 53:20
And music by Thumbug. Museum of No Art, Troll Dolly and Sunfish Moon Light.
Adam Huggins 53:30
Special thanks to Mark Elbroch,
Mendel Skulski 53:32
Nuxalk Radio,
Adam Huggins 53:34
Amanda Hall,
Mendel Skulski 53:35
Brodie Guy,
Adam Huggins 53:36
Kyle Artelle,
Mendel Skulski 53:37
Chris Dairmont,
Adam Huggins 53:39
and to the Sitka Foundation for supporting our fourth season.
Mendel Skulski 53:42
Thank you.
Adam Huggins 53:43
We're also on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. The handle is always Future Ecologies.
Mendel Skulski 53:51
Okay. That's it for this one.
Adam Huggins 53:54
You'll be hearing from us again soon.