The Role of Traditional Ecological Knowledge in the Back to the Future Approach to Ecological Modeling
By R. Russ Jones
ABSTRACT
Alternative information sources such as traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) have exciting new applications in the Back to the Future technique for modeling marine ecosystems. Back to the Future attempts to reconstruct ecosystems as they might have been before the advent of industrial fisheries in order to develop new policy goals for fisheries in order to develop new policy goals for fisheries management. TEK, historical documents and archaeological studies can provide qualitative information about species presence or absence, time and place of occurrence and abundance that can be used to define limits on model parameters. Examples of TEK gathered in interviews with Haida elders about the herring fishery in Haida Gwaii ( the Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia, Canada) are presented. Participants shared their individual experiences and information, mainly about the settlement era in Haida Gwaii that began about 1900. They recalled that herring spawns in the 1930s and 40s were larger and more intense than occur presently and that there was a greater abundance of marine mammals and seabirds. We can all recount memories of our individual experience. But a First Nations' oral history provides a valuable record of their collective memory of significant events and experiences in the more distant past. Archaeological data may provide further evidence of past patterns of resource use. Full recovery of TEK is hampered by cultural change. In this respect, language can be a useful source of embedded cultural information about places and the habits and behaviour of a particular species. While TEK can provide valuable insights into the past, it may require considerable effort to gather and may have to be reconstructed through in-depth studies. But gathering of TEK can have many secondary benefits, particularly for those who do not have as long an association with the land as Canada's First Nations.
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