Oak Bay News
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Thursday, September 9, 2021 A11
UVic researcher helps confirm First Nation’s reduced biodiversity Alberta’s Whitefish Lake members knew of decreasing mammal species Jake Romphf News Staff
A University of Victoria researcher helped with a study that confirmed what members of Alberta’s Whitefish Lake First Nation (WLFN) had known for years: that industry on their traditional lands had reduced the wildlife populations they depend on. The First Nation knew that local moose and fur-bearer numbers were way down, which was concerning because two-dozen Indigenous communities in the area rely on moose for food and fur-bearers are important sources of income. But Whitefish Lake wanted to confirm what generations had observed, so they led the camera-trapping study to see how industry on their land was impacting wildlife numbers, with UVic’s Jason Fisher and the university’s Applied Conservation Macro Ecology Lab providing data analysis for the peer-reviewed study. After three-and-a-half years, the data corroborated the nation’s findings, indicating that moose were less
Whitefish Lake First Nation members. (Photo courtesy of Whitefish Lake First Nation)
Jason Fisher, a University of Victoria researcher, helped confirm what an Alberta First Nation community had already known: that industry was the impacting wildlife living on their land. (Photo courtesy of Jason Fisher) abundant in places with forestry and energy extraction on the traditional territory. Oil and gas well sites within the territory create hundreds of small patches of young vegetation among the intact, mature forest. This attracts small and mid-sized species like snowshoe hares looking to feed on the new plants. But whereas naturally falling trees would provide protection for prey, like the hares, predators (wolves, lynx, coyotes) exploit the unprotected
prey in the open patches. As Whitefish Lake’s members had suspected, this influence threw the predator-prey relationship off balance. The issue, Fisher said, is consultations with communities treat a project’s impacts in isolation and don’t consider all the other development on the same landscape. A key finding in the study was that multiple forms of industry – oil and gas sites, forest harvesting, road developments – on
Whitefish Lake’s territory had a cumulative effect on decreased mammal populations. Fisher noted that the Blueberry River First Nation recently won a court battle over their treaty rights because the B.C. government failed to consider the cumulative effects that several industrial projects would have on the community. Even if there are promises to restore natural landscapes, Fisher said regrowth is a slow process in boreal forests and so once an area is cleared, the impact on wildlife is immediate. He said it’s common for science to back up what Indigenous communities say is happening on their land and hopes the study helps give traditional ecological knowledge more weight in
the decision-making process. “Of course they already knew, they live there, they’ve seen it, they have generations of knowledge, but that’s doesn’t hold up (in court) sometimes,” Fisher said. “We really need to empower community-based monitoring and Indigenous-created research like this so that First Nations can have that power.” With the science confirming what the Nation already knew, Fisher said the onus is on governments, industry and the courts to make sure consultation properly presents the risk to the land and those who depend on it. “Having both of those pieces of information leaves them with nowhere to go.”
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