Sea Otters of Haida Gwaii. Icons in Human-Ocean Relations, by N.A. Sloane & Lyle Dick. Archipelago Management Board, Queen Charlotte BC and Haida Gwaii Museum, 2012. ISBN 978-0-920651-33-9. 184 pp. Cardbound. Fully illustrated in colour and halftone.

Abstract

I would recommend anyone supporting conservation activities or charities to read this story and consider the questions that it poses. It has an important take on the social consequences of species' extermination and their re-introduction, an issue that has only recently started to be taken into account. The authors are a marine ecologist and an historian. The Queen Charlotte Islands off the Coast of British Columbia were renamed Haida Gwaii in 2010 in recognition of the rights of the Haida people who have always lived there. There are actually no Sea Otters (Enhydra lutris) living in the archipelago since the 1920s, although much of its coast is potentially prime habitat. They had been hunted to near extermination between the 1780s and 1820s. The pelts were sold in China for large profits. This trade and the effect it had on the Haida way of life is detailed in the first section of the book. During the 19th century many Haida people were employed in the Fur Seal trade instead, until that collapsed and was prohibited in 1911 (together with Sea Otter hunting).In fact the most dramatic change for the Haida was to take up agriculture and they became major producers of potatoes which were traded on the mainland. The ecological change associated with Sea Otter extermination is dramatic. Kelp forest is replaced by sea urchin grazed ‘barrens’ along large stretches of the coast. However this book gives equal prominence to those (also dramatic) social changes resulting from the uncontrolled hunting. After successful reintroduction of Sea Otters into British Columbia, this is also being considered on Haida Gwaii and indeed natural recolonisation would probably occur in due course. This poses ethical and moral as well as biological questions. The book uses the iconic Sea Otter to provide an excellent discussion of these points and emphasises that these questions apply to our conservation attempts worldwide. There is recognition now that the people living in the land have to be part of the process in deciding about and implementing any protection or reintroduction. This in turn leads to realisation about how difficult and complex such activity really is. The book is written for non-specialists and is intended to introduce these dilemmas to those of us who support conservation but who, at least in the past, have not always realized everything that is involved. The case for Sea Otters seems simple. Reintroduce them, they will eat up the sea urchins, the kelp forest will regenerate and biodiversity will improve with environmental enrichment of the coastline. All that is true but since they disappeared, some of the people living there have come to depend on sea urchins and the abalone fishery. They will not be happy. It will take years before the number of Sea Otters has produced the change back to kelp forest and for this to result in any financial benefit from the new resources such as ecotourism and the more difficult concept of environmental services. Anyway, who should make these decisions? The people living there or the central government? Both of them together, of course. Haida rights in their traditional lands are legally protected, as are our own. So can they (or the government) have a veto? The discussion on plans for Sea Otter futures may be a major lesson and example in dealing with conservation issues elsewhere (whether they relate to badgers in England or elephants in Assam). One's hope is that a desire for a better and sustainable environment (at a financial cost) may win out but we have to be careful what we wish for. We do not always correctly predict the result of our actions, as this book emphasises.