Introduction: The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that indigenous people have a fundamental right to contribute to the management of the resources that support their livelihoods. Salmon are vital to the economy and culture of First Nations in coastal British Columbia, Canada. In this region, traditional systems of management including weirsfences built across rivers to selectively harvest salmonsupported sustainable fisheries for millennia. In the late-19th century traditional fishing practices were banned as colonial governments consolidated control over salmon. Outcomes: In collaboration with the Heiltsuk First Nation we revived the practice of weir building in the Koeye River. Over the first four years of the project we tagged 1,226 sockeye, and counted 8,036 fish during fall stream walks. We used a mark-recapture model which accounted for both pre-spawn mortality due to variation in temperature, and tag loss, to produce the first mark-resight estimates of sockeye abundance in the watershed (4,600-15,000 escapement). Discussion: High river temperatures are associated with increased en route morality in migrating adult sockeye. We estimated pre-spawn mortality ranged from 8-72% across the four years of study, highlighting the degree to which climate conditions may dictate future viability in sockeye salmon populations. These results demonstrate the power of fusing traditional knowledge and management systems with contemporary scientific approaches in developing local monitoring.
Environmental management and monitoring must reconcile social and cultural objectives with biodiversity stewardship to overcome political barriers to conservation. Suitability modelling offers a powerful tool for such “biocultural” approaches, but examples remain rare. Led by the Stewardship Authority of the Kitasoo/Xai’xais First Nation in coastal British Columbia, Canada, we developed a locally informed suitability model for a key biocultural indicator, culturally modified trees (CMTs). CMTs are trees bearing evidence of past cultural use that are valued as tangible markers of Indigenous heritage and protected under provincial law. Using a spatial multi-criteria evaluation framework to predict CMT suitability, we developed two cultural predictor variables informed by Kitasoo/Xai’xais cultural expertise and ethnographic data in addition to six biophysical variables derived from LiDAR and photo interpretation data. Both cultural predictor variables were highly influential in our model, revealing that proximity to known habitation sites and accessibility to harvesters (by canoe and foot) more strongly influenced suitability for CMTs compared with site-level conditions. Applying our model to commercial forestry governance, we found that high CMT suitability areas are 51% greater inside the timber harvesting land base than outside. This work highlights how locally led suitability modelling can improve the social and evidentiary dimensions of environmental management.
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