End of B.C. grizzly hunt and the future of conservation
Grizzly bears in British Columbia are now safe from trophy hunters. New provincial legislation is taking 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 provincial government.
“The government came to the table with 10-year [old] statistical modelling data from fly overs and tree covering,” said 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 said.
“Meanwhile, [First Nations] 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 firsthand 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, said Kelsey Dokis-Jansen, Indigenous Initiatives Manager at the University of Alberta. “The rigour is equal to or greater than that of Western science,” she said. “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,” Archer said. To influence policy, they had to speak bureaucratic language and put knowledge into numbers.
A group of First Nations from across central British Columbia, including the Heiltsuk, Kitasoo Xai’Xais and Wuikinuxv nations, worked with conservation organizations to track bear populations. Their economic assessments proved the value of eco-tourism dwarfed the money brought in from hunting licences and guides. And polls showed nearly 90 per cent of British Columbians supported a ban on the trophy hunt.
The new data corroborated what the First Nations 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,” said 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 have been the go-to method to inform environmental policy, but Archer, Heidt and Dokis-Jansen agree there is room for other tools in the toolbox. Indigenous groups are often the ones living closest to the land. Their daily experiences and real-time observations can also drive policy.
“There are many ways of knowing the world, statistics and data are just one,” Dokis-Jansen said.
“That’s pretty hard to grasp if you haven’t lived it, but I am hopeful we will get there.”