PARENT SESSION
Symposium #23: Relationship, Community, and Intergenerational Innovation: Traditional Ecological Knowledge for Ecosystem Restoration .
Sponsored by ESA Sustainable Biosphere Initiative
Organized by: K Klubnikin, K Rodriguez, J Parrotta, and W Covington
Wednesday, August 7. 1:00 PM to 4:30 PM. Leo Rich Theatre.
A TEK-based marine habitat restoration program: the Samish Indian tribe of Puget Sound (Washington State and British Columbia.
BARSH, RUSSEL*,1, HANSEN, KENNETH C.*,2, 1 Engelberg Center for Innovation law, New York, New York2 Chairman, Samish Tribe, Anacortes, Washington
ABSTRACT- Traditional or local knowledge of ecosystems is not only a source of useful data on the distribution of species and the sizes of their local populations; it can be a source of important insights into local ecosystem dynamics under changing conditions of climate and human exploitation. The San Juan Islands of Puget Sound, a bottleneck in annual migrations of Fraser River sockeye salmon (Onchorynchus nerka), are ancestral territory of the Samish Indian Tribe (Northern Straits Salish). Rapid residential development and recreational activities in the islands threaten the survival of Fraser River sockeye, once the most commercially important salmonid in the Pacific Northwest. Asserting treaty fishing rights and traditional cultural interests, the Samish have launched a long-term research and monitoring program to protect and restore critical marine habitats in their territory beginning with a deep historical reconstruction of ecosystem dynamics under changing patterns of exploitation. The Samish GIS database combines archaeological, ethnohistorical, and biophysical data sets covering more than 500 sites and more than 500 years of human activity. Northern Straits conceptions of ecosystem dynamics are also being used to interpret the data focusing on the roles and knowledge of traditional custiodians of some 25 fishing locations that mark critical habitats as well as important cultural and spiritual places. Samish TEK suggests a complex co-adaptive relationship between the traditional means of regulating Samish fishing and sockeyemigratory behavior productivity than the present-day harvest regime. Samish TEK also suggests that shoreline development affecting a very small proportion of the islands has had a very large adverse impact on sockeye survival.
KEY WORDS: Sockeye salmon, Puget Sound, Samish Tribe, Traditional Ecological Knowledge