To influence policy, Indigenous groups had to speak ‘bureaucrat’ — and put centuries of traditional knowledge into numbers.

Collaborative conservation is key, write Craig and Marc Kielburger.

Grizzly bears in B.C. are now safe from trophy hunters.

This week, new provincial legislation takes effect, banning the hunt for sport. It’s a win for environmental activists and Indigenous groups — but more importantly, it’s informed by Western science and generations of Indigenous knowledge, an early step toward a new type of collaborative conservation.

When the grizzly bear hunt was reinstituted in 2001, many First Nations wanted to end the practice for conservation and cultural reasons, and brought these concerns to the province.

“The government came to the table with 10-year-(old) statistical modelling data from flyovers and tree covering,” says Hadley Archer, executive director of TNC Canada, an affiliate of the world’s largest conservation organization. Government scientists then extrapolated from one part of the province to estimate for others, essentially “guessing” the number of bears in certain regions, he says.

“Meanwhile, (Indigenous) communities knew where the bears were because they see them all the time. They literally have relationships with individual animals.”

Data and models faced off against cultural knowledge and first-hand experience. The data won. The hunt continued.

But while the B.C. government was picking numbers over Indigenous experience, traditional ecological knowledge is gaining a foothold in academia and conservation circles. Thousands of years of lived experience and a deep connection to the land go into Indigenous knowledge, explains Kelsey Dokis-Jansen, Indigenous initiatives manager at the University of Alberta.

“The rigour is equal to or greater than that of Western science,” she says. “Just because it doesn’t look like the data that those trained in science can interpret does not mean it is not real.”

While grizzly bears remained in the scopes of hunters, concerned First Nations spent the next 10 years enhancing traditional knowledge with “data the government would respect,” says Archer. To influence policy, Indigenous groups had to speak ‘bureaucrat’ — and put centuries of traditional knowledge into numbers.

A group of First Nations from across central B.C. worked with conservation organizations to track bear populations. Their economic assessments proved the value of ecotourism dwarfed the money brought in from hunting licences and guides. Public polls showed nearly 90 per cent of British Columbians supported a ban on the trophy hunt.

The new data corroborated what the Indigenous groups had been saying — and convinced the government to end the hunt. “(Taking) what First Nations already know, packaging it in a way that governments accept is a temporary state,” says Aaron Heidt, program director at Central Coast Indigenous Resource Alliance. The goal is building understanding between both parties “to work together to solve the same problems.”

Gathering data and generating models has been the go-to method to inform environmental policy — but Archer, Heidt and Dokis-Jansen agree there is room for other tools in the tool box. Indigenous groups are often the ones living closest to the land. Their daily experiences can also drive policy.