The Kawesas Watershed Assessment

Foreword

Ian Gill (Ecotrust Canada) and Ken Margolis (Nanakila Institute)

The Kawesas Watershed Assessment was initiated in response to the Haisla Nation's concern for the future of the Kawesas and of the Greater Kitlope Ecosystem of which it is an integral part (see Map 2). The Haisla Nation, the Nanakila Institute, and Ecotrust Canada share a vision in which the Kawesas valley is protected in perpetuity, a vision that unites in policy and management an ecosystem that already exists in nature. Current plans to log the Kawesas take into account neither that vision nor the values described in this assessment.

This report characterizes attributes of the Kawesas watershed that lend themselves to uses other than timber harvest, and evaluates likely effects of timber harvest on these attributes. A more detailed publication, the Kawesas Watershed Assessment Technical Report, is available upon request. Together, these publications build on five years of association between the Haisla and Ecotrust.

In a 1991 study produced for Ecotrust and the Earthlife Canada Foundation, Keith Moore identified the 275,000 hectare Kitlope watershed as the largest intact coastal temperate rain forest watershed in British Columbia (Moore 1991). Moore also identified several adjacent pristine watersheds, including the Kawesas, that together form a watershed complex that Moore characterized as "the largest contiguous area of undeveloped primary watersheds in the coastal temperate forest of B.C." The realization that such a large pristine area still existed on British Columbia's coast, combined with the threat that the Kitlope was about to be roaded and logged, led to a partnership between the Haisla Nation and Ecotrust designed to better understand the ecosystem, to strengthen the Haisla people's ties to this part of their ancestral territory, and to protect it from logging.

In 1991 the partnership produced A Cultural and Scientific Reconnaissance of the Greater Kitlope Ecosystem (Travers 1991), reporting the results of an intensive survey of the Kitlope, meant to provide information for various stakeholder groups and to broaden the discussion of the Kitlope's value beyond a focus on timber harvest. The report for the first time fully characterized the Greater Kitlope Ecosystem, an area of contiguous watersheds encompassing 405,578 hectares. This was followed in 1992 by The Greater Kitlope Ecosystem: A Wilderness Planning Framework (Ecotrust 1992), a report that set forth management principles and proposed a broad set of uses as alternatives to industrial logging. The report noted that British Columbia's forests were being cut at a clearly unsustainable rate — 78 million cubic metres a year — which exceeded by one-third the long-run sustained yield of 59 million cubic metres a year calculated by the Ministry of Forests. Logging had already fragmented every other large coastal watershed complex in the province. In addition to pointing out the undeniable ecological significance of the Kitlope, the report made clear another salient issue: "The Kitlope is Haisla territory."

The wilderness planning framework presented a powerful argument for the protection of the Kitlope. It was an argument heard around the world, and in August 1994, most of the Kitlope system — 317,000 hectares in all — was declared forever protected. In March 1996, the Haisla Nation and the provincial government announced a joint management agreement, bringing into being Huchsduwachsdu Nuyem Jees, also known as the Kitlope Heritage Conservancy Protected Area.

In May 1996, Haisla elders and leaders held a feast in Kitamaat Village to celebrate the signing of the Kitlope joint management agreement. It signaled a joyous conclusion to one campaign in the Haisla people's long battle to insist on better stewardship of all Haisla ancestral lands. That battle is far from over.

This report, summarizing the findings of the Kawesas Watershed Assessment Technical Report, continues the battle on behalf of the Kawesas Valley, inexplicably excluded from the area designated by the joint management agreement. Simply put, the Kawesas Valley is a vital component of the Greater Kitlope Ecosystem. This has been the position of the Haisla Nation throughout their negotiations with the province concerning the Kitlope agreement. The Haisla continue to insist that this portion of their territory also be protected.

Until now, watershed assessment has typically been used as a tool for guiding timber harvest activities, or for quantifying damage after a valley's forests have been cut. To our knowledge this is the first time a watershed assessment has been conducted on a pristine landscape, on behalf of conservation. This assessment, produced by Interrain Pacific in partnership with the Haisla people, the Nanakila Institute, and Ecotrust Canada, is an attempt to marry established scientific methodology to the Haisla's traditional ecological knowledge, and convert what has been a reactive procedure into a proactive tool.

The Kawesas Watershed Assessment puts science to work on behalf of the Haisla community. It integrates local knowledge with detached observation to produce a detailed profile of one valley at a particular moment in time. But we hope this document will serve as much more than that. We hope other communities will see it as a model, a benchmark for the sorts of questions that need to be answered about any forested landscape before irreversible decisions are made about its fate.

As a potential conservation area, the Kawesas takes on broader significance within the province because of its relationship to other protected areas and ecoregions. Sandwiched between the mainstem Kitlope and Fiordland Recreation Area, with the potentially protected Spirit Bear to the west and Haida Gwaii beyond, the Kawesas is an important piece of a conservation archipelago stretching from the steppes of interior British Columbia to the sea-scapes of the outer coast. The opportunity to establish this archipelago, which would have profound implications for large scale, long-term conservation planning, is unprecedented.

Currently, the five-year timber harvest planning process is the primary planning tool for dealing with the future of the vast forested landscapes of British Columbia. In the southwestern part of the province, near major population centres, many planning tools are used. In northwestern B.C. — a region of about 5 million hectares — the five-year plans produced by private timber companies that hold tree farm license cutting rights constitute the major source of information influencing land use decisions.

Public participation in the planning process consists of review of five-year plans by public agencies, and presentation of the plans at civic centres around the forest district in question. Company employees typically set up a table and a map display in some public place for one day. In informal conversations, employees responsible for these presentations state that they elicit little interest and few comments. Can there be any doubt that this is, at best, an inadequate way to make crucial decisions about the future? West Fraser Timber Company, which holds logging rights to TFL 41 (an area that includes the Kawesas Valley), recently announced a five-year plan that includes building an access road and harvesting 7,000 cubic metres of timber from the forests of the Kawesas. Prepared before West Fraser's five-year plan was announced, this watershed assessment provides an unusually rich body of information with which to evaluate that plan.

In today's globalized, post-industrial economy, timber harvest planning clearly does not constitute a satisfactory context for irreversible decisions about land use. The fact that company five-year plans rarely elicit response may have far less to do with the lack of public concern than with the absence of independent information with which members of the public or concerned communities can judge the impact of those plans. As the Commission on Resources and Environment process demonstrated so vividly, credible planning must begin with the generation of comprehensive information, and must involve all stakeholders considering all values in an iterative process that includes a strong bottom-up component.

This report is an effort to present the kind of information on which successful regional planning depends, and to demonstrate a model of how such information might be gathered elsewhere. This profile of the Kawesas watershed, assembling scientific information and presenting the cultural perspective of the people whose stake in the valley is highest, represents a level of understanding — far more comprehensive than what has gone before — that British Columbians are entitled to expect as a minimum before any proposal to harvest their remaining old-growth forests

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