Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-2023

Keywords

Emerging issues, Historical ecology, Forage fish, Shifting baselines, Fisheries, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Abstract

Indigenous people and government bodies are often at odds when it comes to acceptable levels of impacts to local ecology that are based on two very different historical and cultural perspectives. For Coast Salish peoples such as Tsleil-Waututh Nation (TWN), who have lived around the Salish Sea for thousands of years, recent historical fisheries records are a pale reflection of the former abundance harvested by their ancestors. For modern ecologists and fisheries scientists, recent fisheries records (post colonization) provide historic baseline and objectives for current management. While this latter perspective is pervasive among regulators, we argue that historical and ongoing negative impacts on local marine resources remain severe and greatly underestimated. In Canada, this historically distorted perspective of both federal and provincial government policymaking leads to mismanagement of current and future fisheries. The historical ecology of forage fish in the Vancouver region is an excellent example of this, and of how Indigenous knowledge can be used to correct currently accepted, but misleading, baselines and objectives for conservation management.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-023-00398-w

Required Publisher's Statement

This is an edited, condensed version of a peer-reviewed publication – for full article see DOI.

Sponsorship/Conference/Institution

Salish Sea Institute

Type

Text

Rights

Copying of this document in whole or in part is allowable only for scholarly purposes. It is understood, however, that any copying or publication of this document for commercial purposes, or for financial gain, shall not be allowed without the author’s written permission.

Language

English

Format

application/pdf

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