Using Ethnohistoric Data to Correct Historical Ecological Baselines: Urbanization and the Collapse of Forage Fish in Vancouver

Indigenous people and government bodies are often at odds when it comes to acceptable levels of impacts to local ecology that are based on two very different historical and cultural perspectives. For Coast Salish peoples such as Tsleil-Waututh Nation (TWN), who have lived around the Salish Sea for thousands of years, recent historical fisheries records are a pale reflection of the former abundance harvested by their ancestors. For modern ecologists and fisheries scientists, recent fisheries records (post colonization) provide historic baseline and objectives for current management. While this latter perspective is pervasive among regulators, we argue that historical and ongoing negative impacts on local marine resources remain severe and greatly underestimated. In Canada, this historically distorted perspective of both federal and provincial government policymaking leads to mismanagement of current and future fisheries. The historical ecology of forage fish in the Vancouver region is an excellent example of this, and of how Indigenous knowledge can be used to correct currently accepted, but misleading, baselines and objectives for conservation management

Archaeological investigations and Tsleil-Waututh Science : reconstructing pre-colonial ecosystems

Meaghan Efford, a UBC 3MT Finalist, shares their research on the history of Burrard Inlet (Tsleil-Waut), collaborating with Tsleil-Waututh scientists and community members. Through analyzing archaeological data such as fish, mammal and bird bones, Efford is in the process of creating an ecosystem model of what Tsleil-Waut had looked like prior to European contact and how this information can help Tsleil-Waututh communities into the future. Meaghan Efford is completing their PhD in Oceans and Fisheries under the supervision of Dr. Villy Christensen.Science, Faculty ofOceans and Fisheries, Institute for theUnreviewedGraduat

Archaeology demonstrates sustainable ancestral Coast Salish salmon stewardship over thousands of years.

Salmon are an essential component of the ecosystem in Tsleil-Waututh Nation's traditional, ancestral, and contemporary unceded territory, centred on present-day Burrard Inlet, BC, Canada, where Tsleil-Waututh people have been harvesting salmon, along with a wide variety of other fishes, for millennia. Tsleil-Waututh Nation is a Coast Salish community that has called the Inlet home since time immemorial. This research assesses the continuity and sustainability of the salmon fishery at təmtəmíxʷtən, an ancestral Tsleil-Waututh settlement in the Inlet, over thousands of years before European contact (1792 CE). We apply Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) analysis to 245 archaeological salmon vertebrae to identify the species that were harvested by the ancestral Tsleil-Waututh community that lived at təmtəmíxʷtən. The results demonstrate that Tsleil-Waututh communities consistently and preferentially fished for chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) over the period of almost 3,000 years. The consistent abundance indicates a sustainable chum salmon fishery over that time, and a strong salmon-to-people relationship through perhaps 100 generations. This research supports Tsleil-Waututh Nation's stewardship obligations under their ancestral legal principles to maintain conditions that uphold the Nation's way of life

WTO must ban harmful fisheries subsidies

Sustainably managed wild fisheries support food and nutritional security, livelihoods, and cultures (1). Harmful fisheries subsidies—government payments that incentivize overcapacity and lead to overfishing—undermine these benefits yet are increasing globally (2). World Trade Organization (WTO) members have a unique opportunity at their ministerial meeting in November to reach an agreement that eliminates harmful subsidies (3). We—a group of scientists spanning 46 countries and 6 continents—urge the WTO to make this commitment..