Indigenous Knowledge and Science Unite to Reveal Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of Distributional Shift in Wildlife of Conservation Concern

Abstract

Range shifts among wildlife can occur rapidly and impose cascading ecological, economic, and cultural consequences. However, occurrence data used to define distributional limits derived from scientific approaches are often outdated for wide ranging and elusive species, especially in remote environments. Accordingly, our aim was to amalgamate indigenous and western scientific evidence of grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) records and detail a potential range shift on the central coast of British Columbia, Canada. In addition, we test the hypothesis that data from each method yield similar results, as well as illustrate the complementary nature of this coupled approach. Combining information from traditional and local ecological knowledge (TEK/LEK) interviews with remote camera, genetic, and hunting data revealed that grizzly bears are now present on 10 islands outside their current management boundary. LEK interview data suggested this expansion has accelerated over the last 10 years. Both approaches provided complementary details and primarily affirmed one another: all islands with scientific evidence for occupation had consistent TEK/LEK evidence. Moreover, our complementary methods approach enabled a more spatially and temporally detailed account than either method would have afforded alone. In many cases, knowledge already held by local indigenous people could provide timely and inexpensive data about changing ecological processes. However, verifying the accuracy of scientific and experiential knowledge by pairing sources at the same spatial scale allows for increased confidence and detail. A similarly coupled approach may be useful across taxa in many regions.

Animal agency: wildlife management from a kincentric perspective

“…, Service et al. ). We see them, especially, as a strong and vital alternative when thinking about how to improve the effectiveness of conventional Euro‐Canadian approaches to wildlife and land‐use management.…”

Intrapopulation diversity in isotopic niche over landscapes: Spatial patterns inform conservation of bear–salmon systems

“…-In the central coast region of BC, our sampling efforts focused on a matrix of islands and nearby mainland valleys ( Fig. 1; Service et al 2014). We collected hair samples from female and male black (unique individual-location-year combinations, n = 90, n = 467, respectively) and grizzly (unique individual-locationyear combinations, n = 52, n = 246, respectively) bears in May and June from 2010 to 2014 at noninvasive hair snagging stations (n = 71 in 2010, growing in effort to n = 265 by 2014) distributed over approximately 22,000 km 2 (for detailed methods, see Bryan et al 2013, 2014, Service et al 2014.…”

Diving back in time: Extending historical baselines for yelloweye rockfish with Indigenous knowledge

“…Both can provide long-term ecological information (i.e. 20-80 years for LEK, centuries for TEK) complementary to scientific data (Beaudreau & Levin, 2014;Haggan et al, 2007;Johannes, 1998;Service et al, 2014). Despite advances in the field of marine historical ecology and growing recognition of the value of unconventional data sources in conservation sciences (Lotze & Worm, 2009;McClenachan et al, 2012McClenachan et al, , 2015, TEK and LEK have been applied infrequently (Drew, 2005;Johannes, 2000;McClenachan et al, 2012).…”