Preserving Ecosystem Services on Indigenous Territory through Restoration and Management of a Cultural Keystone Species

Abstract

Eastern white pine (Pinus strobus L.) is a cultural keystone tree species in the forests of eastern North America, providing numerous ecosystem services to Indigenous people. White pine abundance in the landscape has considerably decreased over the last few centuries due to overharvesting, suppression of surface fires, extensive management, and plantation failure. The Kitcisakik Algonquin community of western Quebec is calling for restoration and sustainable management of white pine on its ancestral territory, to ensure provision of associated ecosystem services. We present five white pine restoration and management scenarios taking into account community needs and ecological types: (1) natural regeneration of scattered white pines to produce individuals of different sizes and ages used as medicinal plants; (2) protection of supercanopy white pines used as landmarks and for providing habitat for flagship wildlife species, and younger individuals left as regeneration and future canopy trees; (3) the uniform shelterwood system to create white pine-dominated stands that provide habitat for flagship wildlife species and support cultural activities; (4) under-canopy plantations to yield mature white pine stands for timber production; (5) mixed plantations to produce forests with aesthetic qualities that provide wildlife habitat and protect biodiversity.

Cultural keystone species revisited: are we asking the right questions?

“…Some authors concluded that the inherent value in the cultural keystone species concept is merely a process of exploration rather than the quantification of cultural significance [30], and others have continued to support the idea that it is useful tool for conservation and restoration [84]. Whether researchers employ qualitative, quantitative, or interdisciplinary methodologies for keystone designation it is clear there are inherent limitations, potential biases, as well as advantages in all of these approaches.…”

Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Community Forest Management: Evolution and Limitations in Mexican Forest Law, Policy and Practice

“…As local, peasant, traditional, and indigenous forms of ecological knowledge, hereafter traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), are increasingly documented, validated and valued, the search for synergies between TEK and environmental sciences has exploded [9,15]. The instrumental potential of TEK for improving conservation, restoration and resource management sustainability is largely recognized [8,16,17]. As pervasive environmental and social crises have exposed the limitations of science and technology, other rationalities and alternative worldviews are pointed to as a potential source of solutions to those crises [18][19][20], leading environmental scientists to increasingly adopt more holistic approaches [13,21], some of which embrace TEK [20,22,23].…”

Governance as a driver of change in the Canadian boreal zone1

“…Alternatively, an increase in the demand for NPrES and increased environmental regulation (stricter policies and better enforcement) may cause the social license for extraction to be removed (Prno and Slocombe 2012). The increase in the demand for NPrES may also increase the capacity and involvement of Indigenous communities, as Indigenous culture places high value around NPrES in Traditional Knowledge and land uses, which is argued to be essential to sustainable forestry (Huntington 2000;Beaudoin et al 2015;Uprety et al 2017). Increases in the demand for both PrES and NPrES have the potential to lead to more sustainable policies because of overlapping needs (Davies and Mazumder 2003), but more often than the focus is on developing PrES over NPrES (Raudsepp-Hearne et al 2010;Zheng et al 2016).…”