surrounding

by Michael Kelly

On Jan. 23 and 24 a group
of 23 people met in a small

7 banquet room at the Mount
' Layton Hot Springs resort. What

they had in common was an
interest in the area called the
Kitlope, a series of river valleys
_ the southern
reaches of the Douglas Channel
south of Kitimat. The 350,000

- hectare area has been identified

as the last remaining unlogged
temperate rain forest of its size
on the planet. At the meeting

‘were a spectrum of technical

specialists, government repre-
sentatives, members of the
Haisla Nation who claim the

. Kitlope as ancestral territory,

and officials from West Fraser
Timber, the company that holds
logging rights to the Kitlope.

_ The gathering was convened
by the Haisla and EcoTrust, a
U.S.-based conservancy organiz-
ation. In the end the two pri-
mary players, the Haisla and
West Fraser, agreed to continue

. meeting to seek a solution with

the assistance of EcoTrust. The
participants think they may have
hit on a@ model process for dis-
pute resolution, having come out
of a potentially explosive land
use Situation with a greater
appreciation for one another's

A designation will carry the fate of the Kitlope

Terrace Review —— Wednesday, February 5, 1992 9

interests. |

This week we examine the
land use options Presented at the
meeting. : oe

T.. Kitlope i is what it is, no

matter what anyone calls it.
However, its. designation _
what the government and the
people with an interest in it
ultimately decide to call it —
will be the greatest determining
fact in its future. .

‘At the moment it is a por-
tion of B.C.’s public forest,
unoccupied Crown land, a part
of West Fraser Timber’s long-
term forest tenure known as
Tree Farm Licence 41, and part
of the Haisla Nation’s compre-
hensive land claim. It is a wild,
mountainous landscape of rivers,
waterfalls, lakes, hot springs,
marine - shoreline, old growth
coastal forest and alpine pla-
teaus, a wilderness and, for
some, a paradise.

And because there are so
many people now interested in
it, the Kitlope will probably
have to be calied something
other than what it is being called

representative,

now. The designation shapes the

use — or absence of it — in the
future.

-The most appealing feature
of the ‘Kitlope is that it is ordi-
nary — forest ecologist Jim
Pojar told the group the area is
representative of the -Kitimat
Ranges, the coastal mountains

that run from Bella Coola to the
-Alaska panhandle. The geology,

the forest, the wildlife habitat,
the ecosystems and general
sttucture of the Kitlope are
representative of what. is com-
monly found throughout the
range. "It’s not particularly
unusual... It’s only unusual in its

size and the fact that it is undis-.

turbed. From an international
perspective, it’s spectacular."
That combination — a big,
temperate rain
forest watershed that hasn’t been
logged or mined or, over the
past 50 years, even lived. in
much by anyone — makes the
Kitlope a potential research
bonanza. It makes the Kitlope a
possible baseline, a means of
measuring natural events on a

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Boundary of Tree
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at Jan 23 & 24 Workshop #

KEMANO RIVER -
KEMANO

TSAYTIS RIVER

local and global scale. Pojar led
the scientific side of the discus-
sion by saying, "The Kitlope
would be good for ecosystem
function research, the study of
how those systems work, It
could also be used for watershed

‘comparison, disturbed versus

undisturbed."

A second ecologist, one who
specializes in ecosystem
reserves, said, "The Kitlope
could act as a control area, a
bench mark. Permanence would
be an important point: for
example, at the present time we
have no means of measuring
global warming... we could
measure genetic alteration occur-
ring in hatchery salmon by com-
paring them to the wild stocks in
the Kitlope... there’s hydrology
comparisons.

"The Kitlope has the size

and diversity to be very valu-

able. It helps that it is represen-
tative rather than exceptional.
The main point is, it has to be
permanently undisturbed if it is
to be of any value."

Ken Lerizman, a natural
resources Management specialist

from Simon: -Fraser University, ~

said the Kitlope could. host
numerous different kinds of
research from a single station:
how to design reserves and
whether watersheds are the best
kind of division; the workings of
ecosystems to help in forest
management decisions; detailed

_-Tesearch. on specific plant. and
‘animal species in an undisturbed

area. "It would have to be per-
manent for long-term monitor-
ing... and the size is an import-
ant issue. It has to be big to

maintain its. ecological integ- —
_ Tity.” ;

_ Clark Binkley, ¢ dean of for-
estry at UBC, said the "nuts and
bolts" of diverse research pro-
jects would have to be figured

out, "For example, some kinds

of research would. conflict with
tourism but are compatible with
ethnobotany (uses the Haisla had
for plants growing in the area).

"There is the issue of
coordination, that is, data-shar-
ing among the scientists. Rules
would have to be established."
Binkley had earlier heard the
story told by the Haisla of how
they came to abandon the Kit-
lope, their children having been

shipped off to residential schools .

run by white people, and he
added: "Would the scientists just
produce more tools to dominate
the Haisla? There would have to
be care in the design of the
program."

Mike Murtha, manager of

iving a name to a watershed —

planning and conservation ‘for
the northern regional office of
B.C. Environment, Lands: and
Parks, explained the provincial
government’s range of land use
designations to the group at the
hot springs during the second
day of discussion. He prefaced
his remarks by noting, "With the
unresolved land claim of the
Haisla, this area ultimately may
not come under provincial juris-

. diction at all."

An ecological reserve would
allow no removal of resources at
all, he said, a designation that
would conflict with fishing,
hunting and trapping by the

Haistla. It could be called a park, -

which would allow those activ-
ities along with tourism and
some other things. Under wil-
derness designation by the Min-
istry of Forests, no logging or
motorized access. would be
allowed. As a Wildlife Manage-

ment area, a few other things.

would be allowed. Provincial
Forest and Crown land is the
most common designation for
B.C. lands, and that’s what the

‘Kitlope is now.

The final option Murtha

offered is a seldom-used power .
of the legislature under the Envi-
ronmental Land Use Act. “It

allows the government to do
anything in the way of land use
designation,” he said. Murtha

concluded by observing that the ;

B.C. government is watching
numerous imaginative reso-
lutions to land use conflicts in
far corners of the globe and
using some of them at home. He
cited as an example the interim
protection measure placed on the
lava beds in the Nass Valley
pending the outcome of the
Nisga’a land negotiations, and
said, "The initiative (in . the
Kitlope) should come from the
Haisla."

Warren Mitchell, represent-
ing the. Ministry of Forests Old
Growth Committee, said his
group has seen this sort of con-
flict all over the province.
"There is a need for a fair, bal-
anced process, and I suggest that
this meeting is an example of
what such a process should be...
you need someone at the table to
speak for each value.

"] suggest we have no desig- —

nation to meet these needs, and
that you go on with this pro-
cess."

"Biosphere" was the desig-
nation offered by Laurie Way-
burn, the executive director of
the Point Reyes Bird Observ-
atory in California.

Wayburn told the group she
had worked 10 years for the
United Nations on creating des-
ignations and settling disputes
over land status in many areas of
the world. Biosphere designa-

— Continued on page 10:

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