Increasingly, there is a yawning gap between the apparent growing prosperity and abundance that we experience daily, and the ecological collapse around us that is hardly noticed, and only discussed in arcane circles of environmental scientists and First Nations.
In British Columbia, Canada, a provincial fisheries collapse and the consequent news that fishermen will need to be economically bailed out are reported by news outlets only to fall on deaf ears. Letters in Science (November 2019) with what might once have been considered alarmist titles, such as: Salmon in clear and present danger note laconically that: Habitat destruction has driven the collapse of wild salmon fisheries from California to Washington, where 93% of wild salmon abundance has been lost. Assuming that somehow the reality of the ongoing salmon collapse is different in BC, those now-banal data only draw a yawn.
It is, however, a global cultural problem as we see science increasingly marginalized in public planning and decision making. There appears to be a large dissonance between what is actually happening to the state of the environment around us, our material expectations, and the assumptions we make about the stability of the resource environment. We treat a rapidly changing and deteriorating environment as though it remains the cornucopia of infinite resources it was at the time of contact, and as if the drivers of change have had no significant long-term or cumulative impacts.
Even local increases in species richness, which give the misleading illusion of increasing biodiversity, can set the stage for a decline in local resilience. Therefore, what we appear to be witnessing, particularly in ocean ecosystems, is a human-driven instability in biodiversity which is a prelude to ecosystem collapse.
The point that most people seem to miss is that it is not just the species composition that is changing. It is the matrix or envelope of that composition that we are rapidly changing, with foreseeable consequences.
There is growing concern over the collapse of the herring fishery throughout the BC coast. It is felt that it is a product of the DFO’s over-estimation and questionable mismanagement of the stock.
After decades of opposition to the DFO’s management of herring, in 2016 the Supreme Court enabled the Heiltsuk Nation to enter in a joint-management agreement with the DFO. Notwithstanding teething disagreements, the Heiltsuk management protocols have now returned to traditional management practices which do not target adult fish and which limit the roe fishery.
The success of this agreement has motivated First Nations around the Salish Sea to advocate for a similar arrangement to control the fishery at Lambert Channel and throughout the Salish Sea. In November, Saanich Nation WSÁNE? Leadership Council (WLC) of Tsartlip, Tseycum, and Tsawout First Nations invited 25 local First Nations and 50 community organizations to an event called HELIT TTE SLON,ET (Let the Herring Live), to develop the groundwork for a traditional management agreement based on science, similar to the Heiltsuk joint management agreement.
Fundamental to this effort is the question of social licence. The DFO’s decades of mismanagement, and the interests that have benefited from this, have largely lost the support of both fishing communities and the public. Unlike fisheries from previous decades, the BC commercial fleet is no longer a quilt work of small boat owners. The commercial fleet is now concentrated in the ownership of BC’s richest billionaire, and therefore the benefits of a destructive fishery are mostly accrued by one billionaire.
The discussion raised by the WSÁNE? Leadership Council comes at a very opportune moment in BC’s history. BC has become the first province in Canada to move to endorse as part of its laws the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP). This is a matter of momentous importance for environmental biologists working around BC. Most of BC is still on unceded territory, and therefore, in principle, the environment is to be managed at the very least through joint management agreements with the rightful owners. There is now an obligation to act in good faith and to work jointly.
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