Areas of remaining ‘natural’ ecosystems are increasingly problematic to identify, study and manage because they are also the products of cultural processes associated with indigenous and other tribal societies. And this layer of human ecology in the landscape remains poorly acknowledged.

On the West Coast of North America, there are huge areas, such as in California and Oregon, where these indigenous cultural impacts have been largely removed – though efforts at re-establishment of stewardship and harvest as part of community develop are increasing. In other areas, such as many of these examples from present-day British Columbia, the weave of non-human and cultural processes, can still be identified and this work is increasingly used to be understanding local landscape ecologies and for the re-establishment of jurisdictions by First Nations governments.

******************************************************************

Field studies of natural and cultural landscapes begun as part of a Master of Science thesis in Ecosystem Management

The initial 1979 – 1980 field work for ‘Fragments’ was under contract with the Ecological Reserve Unit of the British Columbia Ministry of Lands, Parks and Housing. The first phase of surveys of the interiors and exteriors of a number of ecological reserves, established under the 1971 Ecological Reserves Act, was to create a basis to begin to conceive of management and restoration activities to better maintain the integrity of those ecosystems. But there was resistance within the government and with local biologists to acknowledge the cultural nature of these landscapes and aboriginal stewardship and protection in particular. In the previous year, the report became an MSc thesis in Ecosystem Management (Gordon Brent Ingram. 1981. Fragments: Management, protection and restoration proposals for thirteen ecological reserves in British Columbia, Canada. A report to the Ecological Reserves Committee and Advisory Board of the Ministry of Landscape, Parks and Housing of the Government of BC, June 1981. Available through University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, Michigan, thesis number 1317516.) Ingram 1981 Fragments – Management, protection and restoration proposals for thirteen ecological reserves in British Columbia .

The implications of this study took another decade to begin to be institutionalized and even today there is a school of local biology that continue to avoid fully acknowledge the legacies, continued engagement, and jurisdictions of First Nations. In reading my timid analyses from three decades back, I cringe. I hope that the First Nations with jurisdictions in these areas will forgive me for so moderating my perspectives. Like many young people in field studies, I was trying to complete my degree to then tackle the bigger policy issues. And I was grossly underpaid for this contract.

So today this work can be acknowledged is being ‘neocolonial’ and somewhat colonised. But resistance to acknowledging aboriginal impacts on and jurisdictions in West Coast ecosystems continues. My subsequent work as a co-founder of the Garry Oak Ecosystems Recovery Team (GOERT) in 1999 and work in subsequent years is a case in point (Ingram 2007 Unresolved legacies). In many ways, today’s ongoing efforts to ‘decolonise’ biology and ecosystem management and recovery in British Columbia are less patient and better informed variations on the same conversations from previous decades.

In subsequent years, additional baseline areas along the West Coast were also documented including Santa Cruz Island in California. And the inventorying, monitoring, and visual documentation continues. In subsequent years, more contemporary research on these landscapes will be posted.