Our reporting team traveled to a remote forest off the west side of Vancouver Island to witness an Indigenous-led effort to establish salmon parks. The fruits of this movement could have an impact 500 years from now. Read more:
By Lynda V. Mapes, Erika Schultz and Lauren Frohne, Seattle Times staffTribal leaders want to establish salmon parks here to protect this land and water and the forests that give them life.These parks would conserve whole ecosystems, anchored by old-growth trees, that may soon be lost as clear-cut logging pushes closer.
The forest and native plants nourish and protect this stream from its banks to its depths, from freshwater to salt.It’s the last uncut salmon stream in Nuchatlaht territory — where only their top chief was allowed to fish. When logging began at the head of the stream, around the lake where sockeye spawn, Nuchatlaht leaders fought to protect it.
The tribes now want the parks, already declared under traditional law, recognized and honored by the B.C. government.First Nations managed forests on Vancouver and Nootka islands for thousands of years. As logging encroached on the last untouched salmon stream in their traditional territory, leaders of the Nuchatlaht Tribe launched a movement to heal and protect this land.
Wealth came from the abundance of their land and waters, and was for the community measured by how much could be given away — not kept for individual profit. Sustainability is a core belief and a teaching.That changed with the arrival of the newcomers. They came for the furs and stayed for the trees.Before there was a British Columbia, or a Canada, or a United States, there was this beach.
“Captain Cook landed on my beach and that’s when my problems started,” said Jerry Jack Jr., 60, a hereditary chief of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht. Clear-cut logging destroys the natural stream hydrology, with flows reduced by as much as 50% in summer as water is sucked up by young plantation trees, scientists have found. The water deficit can last decades, and it is not avoided even with better logging practices leaving stream bank buffers.
The trees have always helped his people, Williams said. Western red cedar, traditionally known as the Tree of Life, was used from birth to death: shredded bark for baby diapers, twined bark for fishing nets, woven bark for clothing and baskets, carved and split wood for tools, house planks, dishes and boxes, and trees felled for canoes — some used for burials, hoisted in trees.
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