Kitsumkalum First Nations members harvesting seaweed. Photo credit: Kitsumkalum annual MaPP reporting 2023)

Numerous industrial activities are creating development pressure on B.C.’s North Coast. These projects, along with human activities and climate change, are having a profound impact on the core values of First Nations in the region. To address this concern, the North Coast Cumulative Effects Program (NCCE Program) offers community harvesting grants to six Nations: Gitga’at First Nation, Gitxaała Nation, Haisla Nation, Kitselas First Nation, Kitsumkalum First Nation, and Metlakatla First Nation. The intent of the grants is to offset the loss of resources from past and ongoing development by addressing a commonly identified barrier from community-based research.

The Kitselas First Nation has applied for and received these grants each year since they were first offered in 2021. Cindy Barwell is the Senior Resource Stewardship Officer with the Kitselas Lands & Resources Department.

“Our first two grants were for a community-led, education-based traditional foods harvesting program that provided Kitselas Elders and households with food fish”. said Cindy.

Kitselas First Nation members processing food fish

She noted that Kitselas members find it increasingly hard to access and secure traditional foods due to pressures associated with time, capacity, industrial development, and competition. Funding like this provides an opportunity to start to address some of the issues associated with food security and access to traditional resources.

The Kitselas First Nation has also used the grant program to fund a fishwheel feasibility study. Access to food fish and food fishing locations has been identified as an issue for the Nation. The feasibility study was essential for the community to make an informed decision about the value of repairing old fishwheels.

Smoking salmon on the Kitselas First Nation.

Cindy recently applied for a grant for a food fish instructional booklet and video.

“This booklet and video will provide people with step-by-step instructions on how to catch and process food fish, taught by fellow community members and elders who hold knowledge and expertise. Previous grants have added to Kitselas’ sovereignty and presence within their Traditional Territory. This grant adds to a myriad of programs that are assisting Kitselas members with their food security and sovereignty priorities.”

The nearby Kitsumkalum First Nation has also received community harvesting grants since the program’s inception. Quinton Ball is the Nation’s Strategic Lead for Environment Lands and Referrals.

“Our first grant allowed us to buy an open fishing jet boat for getting community members out on the water,” he said. “It’s been super successful and allowed members to harvest food fish and get back on the water safely.”

The Kitsumkalum First Nations boat purchased with an NCCE Program community harvesting grant enjoying the beautiful upper Kitsumkalum River (Beaver River).

The following year the Kitsumkalum First Nation used its grant money to purchase a trailer for transporting fish from Prince Rupert to Terrace and the year after that invested in ice machines and additional totes for storage.

“One of the barriers we have is with so many of our members working on LNG or other projects it’s become hard to collect harvest and then process fish fast enough.” said Quinton. “This leads to wastage. Having ice available helps with food preservation, which helps facilitate better use of our resources.”

Kitsumkalum First Nations members harvesting oolichan.

Quinton’s goal with these and other grants is to help put the community back in charge of their own food harvesting.

“The ability to get back out on the water and the land and do traditional harvests is huge,” he said. “Everyone from Terrace and beyond hunts right up our valley. There’s logging that has occurred heavily right through our valley. There’s not much left on what will soon become treaty lands, so we need to be able to access all areas of our Traditional Territory to harvest food and medicine.”

The aims of the community harvesting grants align with MaPP’s goal of sustainable economic development and healthy communities. MaPP’s North Coast subregion and the Environmental Stewardship Initiative joined forces to create the NCCE Program, which funds the grants. The shared desire is to develop and implement a cumulative effects framework to continuously monitor, assess, and manage the impacts of development in the North Coast on core coastal and marine values.

DEVELOPING LOCAL EXPERTISE: Warren Bolton, a Kitsumkalum band member, GIS technician, and drone operator, undertakes eelgrass survey work near Ridley Island on the North Coast. Bolton’s involvement with MaPP’s CE project dovetailed perfectly with formal studies in the sciences. Photo credit: Quinton Ball

Marine plan implementation on the North Coast is getting a boost thanks to collaboration between the Marine Plan Partnership (MaPP) and the North Coast Environmental Stewardship Initiative (ESI) —a B.C. government initiative that was created to address First Nations’ environmental concerns around resource development.

In 2017, the two groups informally merged into one team to accomplish a shared goal: Technically build out and fully implement a cumulative effects framework to monitor, assess, and manage the impacts of industrial and non-industrial development on the North Coast. Cumulative effects are the changes in environmental, social, economic, health and cultural values as a result of the combined effect of present, past and reasonably foreseeable human actions or natural events (MaPP, 2016). The project team includes representation from North Coast First Nations (Gitga’at, Gitxaala, Haisla, Kitselas, Kitsumkalum, and Metlakatla) and the Province of B.C.

A convergence of MaPP and ESI work on cumulative effects on the North Coast began in 2015. MaPP had already begun implementing its North Coast Marine Plan. Federal agencies (such as Environment and Climate Change Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada) and provincial resource ministries (such as the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation and the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development) were responding to the need for cumulative effects monitoring and deeper involvement of First Nations in decisions about coastal development projects—particularly, liquefied natural gas. With so many of the same people involved in related discussions, it made sense to bring them together.

Maya Paul, Program Director of Cumulative Effects Strategic Initiatives for the North Coast-Skeena First Nations Stewardship Society, co-manages the integrated MaPP and ESI North Coast Cumulative Effects Program. According to Paul, a key consideration for the North Coast Nations’ engagement in monitoring and assessment projects was their desire for the work to lead to decision-making and action. “North Coast First Nations knew cumulative effects were important but were approaching it independently. They knew they needed to work together, and with other governments, to achieve stronger and more meaningful outcomes.”

Team members are thoughtfully incorporating relevant learnings to support monitoring, assessment, and management of cumulative effects on core values of common importance. They’re currently focused on four values that were prioritised as a starting point: Aquatic Habitats (Estuaries, with a focus on the Skeena Estuary); Salmon; Food Security (with a focus on harvested foods); and Access to Resources (for social and cultural uses). Rebecca Martone, a provincial marine biologist on the North Coast Cumulative Effects project team, notes how important it is to assess interconnected indicators for the values they’re working on. “By developing and selecting indicators in parallel for habitats, key species, cultural values, and human wellbeing, we really start to understand the complexities in the methodologies required to assess cumulative effects, and how indicators can inform more than one value and thus create efficiencies for how those factors are considered in decision-making.”

MARINE BIODIVERSITY IN THE NORTH COAST: Abalone, otherwise known as sea snails, are a species at risk of extinction and are just one of many marine species that rely on healthy kelp forests in the North Coast. Photo credit: Maya Paul

Continued effort and dedication of team members has resulted in steady progress on each of the values. For example, a North Coast data management system has been developed to enable project team members to contribute, house, aggregate, analyze, and visualise a wide range of regional monitoring data to support decision-making. In addition to identifying a suite of indicators for the Aquatic Habitats (Estuaries) and Food Security & Access to Resources values, the Project Team has developed protocols that will set the procedures and standards for conducting assessments of the condition of the value now and in the future. They’ve developed a suite of indicators and implemented a survey to gather insights from North Coast First Nations community members on the Food Security & Access to Resources values. Quinton Ball, a Terrace-based environmental scientist contracted by Kitsumkalum Nation, explains: “Good indicators should serve as meaningful metrics that can be used to measure and understand change and enable affordable collection of standardised data that are useful for a variety of purposes.” Adds Ball, “Good indicators reveal important changes before we notice them.”

A current condition assessment of the Skeena Estuary value and a cumulative effects assessment of Food Security & Access to Resources values were completed in early 2021, which led to the development of a suite of interim recommendations that the team has begun to implement this year. A field monitoring project, designed to support assessment of the Skeena estuary, is now into its fifth year. The field program has realized many accomplishments, including training and engaging First Nations technicians in the marine environment, leveraging and building capacity in First Nations’ stewardship offices and improving the effectiveness of monitoring by utilising local knowledge in the design of the program. This has resulted in the collection of four years of data to serve as a beginning baseline for assessments. The team has also framed the scope of the initial assessment of the salmon value and began work on it at the end of 2020.

Heather Johnston, with the Environmental Stewardship Initiative Branch of the Ministry of Energy, Mines, and Low Carbon Innovation, co-manages the integrated Cumulative Effects program. She feels the project’s value extends far beyond the North Coast region. “It’s part of implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, where First Nations have a real say in what’s going on in their traditional territories.”

Members of the North Coast Cumulative Effects Project team speak highly of each other’s qualifications and commitment to the work. “The level of professionalism and desire among agencies to collaborate—I just don’t think it’s been done at this level before,” says Ball. And Ball loves seeing new passions for science ignited among First Nations community members who get involved in monitoring work and then go on to explore science-related careers.

DEVELOPMENT IN THE NORTH COAST: Sustainable economic development in the North Coast is just one of the priorities being addressed through collaborative efforts between the Province of B.C. and several North Coast First Nations, through the Marine Plan Partnership (MaPP) and the North
Coast Environmental Stewardship Initiative (ESI). Photo credit: Maya Paul

A new camping area was cleared and platforms built for the 2017 Haisla Cultural Camp. Photo credit: Brenda Bouzane.

Located just half an hour from Kitimat, Weewanie Hot Springs Park is a completely different world than most of us inhabit. Accessible only by water, it is a remote wilderness destination where Xbox and iPads know no purpose. It was also home to 17 Haisla youth for 10 days last summer as they participated in the Haisla Nation’s revived cultural camp. The focus of the camp, which was made possible by the Haisla Nation Council and funded in part by MaPP, was to teach participants about Haisla culture and to be respectful of Haisla resources.

MaPP’s North Coast Marine Plan encourages capacity building in First Nations and local communities. An important first step for greater participation in stewardship, monitoring and enforcement, and economic development activities is to teach youth the skills they need in order to participate effectively and contribute to sustainable development in their communities.

Bea Wilson teaching the youth how to cut salmon in a way that none of the fish is wasted. Photo credit: Brenda Bouzane.

“We struggle with capacity building in the areas of self-governance and environmental stewardship; we don’t have enough people with those skills right now and there’s a need for more youth recruits,” said Mike Jacobs, the Haisla Nation’s fisheries manager and one of the camp’s organizers. “The camp was an immersive experience and exposed youth to Haisla culture through the traditional use of natural resources.”

Each day participants learned traditional practices such as canoeing, crab fishing and long lining for halibut. They processed fish and ate traditional foods. Daily hikes allowed for exploration including along hereditary trap lines. The community cultural coordinator with the Haisla Nation gave a language lesson while another guest taught cedar weaving.

Another camp highlight was a visit from Shelley Bolton and Terry Nyce from the Spirit of Kitlope dance group, who taught the youth traditional drumming songs and dances.

Guests from Spirit of the Kitlope dance group taught the youth traditional drumming songs. Photo credit: Brenda Bouzane.

The youth were empowered by learning about their culture. Photo credit: Brenda Bouzane.

“Everyone made a drum to keep and all the youth took part in the singing,” said Shelley. “Some dove right into it, while others took a while to come out of their shells. By the end, though, they couldn’t get enough. Nowadays our lives are so full of technology. This camp showed the youth that they can enjoy themselves without TV. It was such a great experience and I hope more youth will embrace opportunities to connect with nature and our culture.”

“We don’t have the opportunities to pull crab traps or to be out on the land like we used to,” said Angie Maitland, an early child education coordinator with the Haisla Nation who was another of the camp’s organizers. “The camp changed that. All 17 participants want to go again and they made long-lasting friendships. Everyone grew from the experience, including staff.”

“It was a life-changing opportunity,” added Mike. “The youth didn’t know these resources were right on their doorstep. Familiarizing them with their territory is a high priority for the Haisla Nation Council. People have become disconnected from resource management. Our intent is to offer more camps and to broaden the age range. We want to reconnect youth in a way that will bring them happiness and prosperity.”

Youth learned how to weave cedar. Photo credit: Brenda Bouzane.

Hanging salmon in the smokehouse. Youth made half-dried salmon and t’los, a fish jerky. Photo credit: Brenda Bouzane.

Some of the canned salmon the youth prepared. Photo credit: Brenda Bouzane.

A group shot from the Haisla Youth Camp, showing the youth, support staff, and members of the Spirit of Kitlope dance group. Photo credit: Brenda Bouzane.

Maya Paul, North Coast cumulative effects coordinator. Photo credit: Maya Paul.

Growing up in the rolling savannah of Botswana in southern Africa, Maya Paul could never have imagined that she would one day find herself living amid the rain forests of British Columbia’s north coast. Yet that’s exactly where her expertise in strategic planning and engagement has led her.

In January 2016, Maya was appointed cumulative effects coordinator for the North Coast MaPP sub-region, working on behalf of both the North Coast Skeena First Nations Stewardship Society and the Province of B.C. “My role is to coordinate the collaborative development and implementation of a MaPP cumulative effects framework in the North Coast,” she says.

Container traffic in Prince Rupert has increased at a faster pace than any other North American port. Photo credit: Maya Paul.

Cumulative effects are changes to environmental, social and economic values that are caused by the combined effects of past, present and reasonable foreseeable actions or events. Maya has the task of coordinating the development of a framework that accounts for changes to core marine values from human activities on a large stretch of coastline in northern B.C. that includes First Nations communities and the bustling hubs of Prince Rupert, Terrace and Kitimat. Development is being proposed at a rapid pace in the region and Paul hopes to pinpoint the major concerns of coastal communities around effects on core values from the rush of new projects, several of which are still in the midst of environmental assessments.

“A key component of the framework we are developing involves defining the core values of people in these communities,” notes Maya. “Once we identify the core values we have to establish indicators for those values, prioritize them, create a monitoring system, and then try to anticipate how those core values might change over time.”

Understanding core values is a key component of cumulative effects assessment. Photo credit: Birgitte Bartlett.

Although core values can be basic things like clean water, clean air and healthy food, her work also addresses the effect of development on socio-cultural and economic values, which can be harder to define. “For example, First Nations worry that their access to traditional resources will change from impacts to the health and quality of their seafood, socioeconomic impediments, or access to the harvest areas,” explains Maya. The framework is intended to guide management and regulatory processes in order to improve the stewardship of coastal and marine ecosystems and resources, and the human well-being of coastal communities. “Ultimately, the goal is to sustain the core coastal and marine values over the long run.”

The theme of sustainability has been a major driver in Maya’s life since she left Africa and attended the University of Guelph in Ontario where she earned a Master of Science in Environmental and Resource Economics. She also holds a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science.

Calculating cumulative effects in marine ecosystems is challenging because values and impacts often cross jurisdictional boundaries. Photo credit: Allison Paul.

The MaPP governance structure established to implement the North Coast Marine Plan is unique in that it involves a collaborative working arrangement between two governments: provincial and First Nations. Creating clean lines of communications between the two camps is at the crux of Maya’s work. “I love bringing people together to ensure sustainability. It’s all about working collaboratively. You can’t accomplish anything enduring unless you bring the different decision-making groups together to sit in the same room and collaborate.”

“The cumulative effects framework that is developed by the MaPP partners here will inform the partners’ approach to stewardship on the North Coast moving into the future,” explains Maya. “We expect it to be a living document.”

Download A Framework for the Assessment and Management of Cumulative Effects on the North Pacific Coast.

Natural resources of the North Coast have high cultural significance to the residents. Photo credit: Maya Paul.

Rina Gemeinhardt with boxes of paperwork from one project referral

Rina Gemeinhardt’s work towers over her. The eight-foot stack of boxes in the Kitsumkalum First Nation referrals office contains paperwork for just one stage of one project.  It’s only one of some 20 marine- or land-use applications that are referred each month to the Kitsumkalum by the Province of British Columbia and proponents.

With traditional territory that includes Terrace and Prince Rupert, the Kitsumkalum are responding to some 14 major projects underway or proposed in the North Coast region, several of them related to LNG development.

Back in fall 2012, when Gemeinhardt started her job as referrals and consultation specialist, she was shown an empty office with a computer but no digital or hard-copy records. She quickly realized she needed to establish a system to record and catalogue all the new referrals-related activity. With many project proposals in the works, a requirement to track engagement and a wide spectrum of people involved in the process including chiefs, counselors, colleagues and community members, she needed help with information management.

Enter Cedar, a web-based software program spearheaded by Coastal First Nations to address First Nations’ information management related to the referrals process.

Referrals come from provincial ministries or agencies and relate to development applications on Crown land that may have an impact on a First Nation’s territorial land or resources. Areas of impact could involve archeological sites, ecological sensitivities, traditional uses or economic benefits.

A development application could involve anything from a bike trail to marine dredging to a major infrastructure project. First Nations response could be a quick “no concerns here” or could involve commissioning reports from technical experts, conferring with other First Nations with overlapping territories and/or back and forth with the Province or project proponent.

Cedar helps staff log, analyze and respond to Crown land referrals and keeps track of email, mail and phone correspondence. It was developed by GeoMemes and piloted by the Metlakatla First Nation where it has created efficiencies in organization, tracking and filing. The Cedar program continues to evolve to address First Nations’ needs.

“Our chief was obviously hugely busy, especially with this LNG stuff,” explains Gemeinhardt. “So he said, ‘What I really need is a button.’” So the programmers developed a Chief Dashboard. “It helps somebody who is not super tech savvy and who needs condensed, up-to-date information,” she explains. “So, now the Chief’s Dashboard is where our chief can go to easily drill down for information on a specific project, or quickly get a summary.”

In addition, because the program is a collaborative, web-based tool, several people can work on it at the same time with secure access from remote locations.

The latest version of Cedar will include a spatial or mapping component. This will allow referrals offices to produce maps to illustrate data that might be important to an application such as proposed marine protected areas. The MaPP Marine Planning Portal has over 250 data layers the may help to populate this iteration of Cedar.

When Cedar first arrived in her office four months ago, Gemeinhardt was a little overwhelmed at the prospect of learning a new program, getting buy-in from all potential users and hiring and training someone to input the data. But that feeling has passed. “Now it’s just excitement,” says Gemeinhardt. “I’m thinking, oh man, this could be built upon and built upon and totally made to fit us.”