Conserving Habitat and Biological Diversity: A Study of Obstacles on Gwaii Haanas, British Columbia

Abstract

W ith concern growing for protecting natural ecosystems, biological diversity, genetic resources, and subsistence economies, it is useful to construct frameworks to evaluate institutional capabilities for expanding conservation planning programs. The experience of the Haida, a northwestcoast Native American people inhabiting the Queen Charlotte Islands (also called Haida Gwaii) on the north coast of British Columbia, provides an opportunity to examine the evolution of conservation frameworks leading to joint and comanagement of natural areas and resources.' The Haida Gwaii example is distinct, particularly compared with the United States, because of the use of sovereignist strategies to stop unsustainable exploitation of ancient temperate rainforests. Unresolved questions of sovereignty and land and resource ownership provided the backdrop for unique alliances between non-Native environmentalists and Native activists, some of whom are nationalistic. Although recent efforts to resolve issues of hereditary titles over the southern part of the archipelago, Gwaii Haanas, which was formerly referred to as Moresby, have been partially successful, various obstacles continue to undermine conservation efforts.2 Institutional obstacles to habitat protection and ecosystem management began in 1851 when the Crown colony of British Columbia began to annex the islands.3 Despite repeated Haida assertions of sovereignty and traditional tenure since that time, the colonial and subsequent British Columbia provincial and Canadian federal governments denied these rights and managed the land and its wealth based on non-Native priorities. Until recently, respective governments did not support a framework for establishing viable protected areasespecially for the conservation of local biological diversity. Nonrenewable extractive operations, particularly clearcut logging of old-growth forest and mining, have been contentious throughout the region because of subsequent losses of traditional resources. Furthermore, Parks Canada, a federal agency that became involved in Gwaii Haanas land management after British Columbia ceded its responsibility for management to the Canadian government in 1988, had not emphasized management of natural habitat and protection of biological resources. Instead this agency had historically been more concerned with providing public services for tourism. In the 1974-87 South Moresby conflict, the Canadian government reacted slowly to the dispute between interests supporting rapid, largescale clearcut logging versus those advocating conservation of temperate rainforest, until as a compromise the provincial government agreed to cede jurisdiction. This 1988 agreement involved an expensive compensation package for wilderness preservation. But the Haida Nation and the Canadian federal government only forged a basis for joint management of Gwaii Haanas in 1993, and vestiges of colonial land management patterns still hinder the stewardship of forests, wildlands, biological resources, and traditional cultural sites on Gwaii Haanas, as in much of the Pacific Rim.