VANCOUVER, B.C.—Kwiakah First Nation may only have 19 members, but those members have big plans.
The West Coast's smallest First Nation, based on Vancouver Island, is creating an innovative stewardship economy that puts sustainability and conservation first. The community is transforming a former open-net salmon farm into a floating, solar-powered scientific hub anchored in their traditional territory along the wild, central coast of B.C.
Once completed this summer, the Kwiakah Centre of Excellence will be the base for a dedicated research station, an experimental kelp farm, the First Nation's regenerative forestry operations, and its Forest Keepers territorial guardian program.
The floating centre, based near the Nets'inux village site at the Kwiakah Matsayno Reserve, will be accessible only by boat and features an accommodation barge and research lab, a float house with accomodations to support up to 16 scientists and stewardship staff, and a one-hectare test farm for kelp and seaweed-all connected by docks and anchored near Kwiakah's Matsayno reserve lands, in the heart of their core territory.
The First Nation intends to revitalize its lands and waters, much of which were damaged by logging and other extractive industries. The community is building a stewardship economy that will bring in financial support while putting the environment first.
After years of hard work, the First Nation successfully established the Macinux Special Forest Management Area (SFMA) that covers 7,865 hectares of forested land within the Great Bear Rainforest. The ninth management area within the wider Great Bear Rainforest conservation area, will ban logging in favour of regenerative operations to bring the forest back to its pre-industrial state. The First Nation also will expand its protected forest area to 56,000 hectares by purchasing other logging licences in its traditional territory. The SFMA was created through an Order in Council, following Kwiakah's purchase of harvest rights from Interfor, and effectively doubles the amount of protected land in Kwiakah territory.
The First Nation is exploring ways to monetize and diversify the ecosystem services that preserving or regenerating nature can provide to create coastal jobs and services.
The Macinux centre will be used to deepen the collaborative research Kwiakah have done on sustainable aquaculture, land stewardship and Indigenous studies and to share that research with academic institutions.
In addition to revenue generation from things like forest carbon offsets, the First Nation has acquired small woodlots and will research and quantify the ecological and economic benefits of selective logging as a source of forestry revenue, rather than relying on clear-cut tactics.
Island Coastal Economic Trust has invested $200,000 in the project, through its Capital and Innovation Program, to develop the First Nation's kelp and seaweed farming initiatives.
