{"id":26055,"date":"2019-01-22T00:05:06","date_gmt":"2019-01-22T08:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/?post_type=custom_features&p=26055"},"modified":"2021-09-29T12:45:47","modified_gmt":"2021-09-29T19:45:47","slug":"deer-wars-the-forest-awakens","status":"publish","type":"custom_features","link":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/features\/deer-wars-the-forest-awakens\/","title":{"rendered":"Deer Wars: The Forest Awakens"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This article is one in a three-part series that explores reconciliation with Canada\u2019s Indigenous people through reinvigorating control and access to resources. The others are \u201cIn the Kingdom of the Bears<\/a>\u201d and \u201cOf Roe, Rights, and Reconciliation<\/a>.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The shots rang out from the land, the sea, and the air. Hunters\u2014cold, wet, and cramped in their efforts to remain motionless\u2014waited for hours in ambush, hoping to entice their prey with apples, corn, and fresh cedar boughs. When no more animals came to the bait stations, sharpshooters, imported from New Zealand, scrambled from skiffs onto the island and across jagged, seaweed-covered rocks, chase dogs in tow. The dogs cornered their quarry in the forest or drove them onto the beach to be picked off from the boats, while stragglers that sought refuge in inaccessible terrain were sniped from helicopters.<\/p>\n

As we round the rugged seaward coast of Ramsay Island in the central British Columbia archipelago of Haida Gwaii off Canada\u2019s storm-lashed west coast, Judson Brown and Tauren Collinson recount stories of their involvement in the hunt and share nervous chuckles over a few tricky moments\u2014hefting dogs out of boats, pulling people out of the bone-chilling Pacific, chasing prey through the surf.<\/p>\n

They can laugh now, but there\u2019s nothing funny about the tense events Brown and Collinson are recollecting: the 2017 attempted eradication of invasive deer from Ramsay and five other locations in Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve, National Marine Conservation Area Reserve, and Haida Heritage Site.<\/p>\n

\"Hunters<\/a>

Expert hunters from New Zealand and dogs outfitted with GPS collars land on an island in Haida Gwaii to help remove invasive deer. Photo courtesy of Parks Canada<\/p><\/div>\n

While the park\u2019s official title might be a complex jurisdictional mouthful, Brown and Collinson\u2019s connection to it is straightforward. Both are members of the Haida Nation and, at the time of my visit, employees of Parks Canada, partner organizations that jointly oversee the 1,470-square-kilometer park reserve and an ambitious ecological restoration project known as Llgaay gwii sdiihlda<\/em>\u2014Restoring Balance.<\/p>\n

Following a successful multiyear program of eradicating invasive rats from six islands, the additional removal of deer under Restoring Balance aims to create an invasive-mammal-free zone in Juan Perez Sound, at the heart of the park. To this end, deer are being removed from the Bischofs, a group of five islands and a few islets, as well as Faraday, Murchison, House, Hotspring, and Ramsay Islands. Round one\u2014the 2017 population knockdown\u2014bagged almost 600 deer; over 400 from Ramsay alone.<\/p>\n

That six-month effort included hunting at baited ambush stations and along the shoreline, followed by a dog- and helicopter-assisted \u201cmop up.\u201d The hunters easily scrambled around Ramsay\u2019s rugged terrain, aided by the very reason for the cull: the towering temperate rainforest had been browsed clean of its typically lush understory, and along with the plants had disappeared fungi, invertebrates, birds, and native mammals reliant on them.<\/p>\n

\"hunting<\/a>

Team members (left to right) Judson Brown, Jay Jones, Tauren Collinson, and James Bulbrook received professional marksmanship training as part of the Restoring Balance Project. Photo by Chris Gill\/Coastal Conservation\/Parks Canada<\/p><\/div>\n

Removing deer allows the plants to regenerate, supporting the return of native biodiversity and rebuilding ecosystem resiliency. For the Haida, who\u2019ve occupied these islands for some 13,000 years, it will also revitalize a lost food source and botanical medicine chest\u2014ethnobotanical surveys here cite over 150 species of plants, many of which have been decimated by deer. If ecological restoration is an act that expresses love for an environment and hope for the future, Restoring Balance stands as a bold and important collaboration for an additional reason: with Canada engaged in broad-based social and political reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, the dual restoration of biological and cultural integrity in Gwaii Haanas constitutes a form of ecological reconciliation.<\/p>\n

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On a map, Haida Gwaii floats off the coast of British Columbia like a long wedge of pizza, with a 100-kilometer-wide crust in the north tapering to a point some 300 kilometers south. Of the archipelago\u2019s approximately 350 islands, over 200 lie within the boundaries of Gwaii Haanas, which comprises the southern third of the chain. Haida Gwaii has been called the \u201cGalapagos of the north\u201d for the many endemic species and subspecies that evolved there while it was an ice-free refugia during the height of Pleistocene glaciation. Several plant species and a type of slug\u2014as well as genetically distinct forms of more widespread species such as the hairy woodpecker, saw-whet owl, Steller\u2019s jay, Peale\u2019s peregrine falcon, black bear, and pine marten\u2014are all found here and nowhere else. But numerous introductions of nonnative organisms now threaten this unique biodiversity. And while the litany of harmful aliens includes plants, insects, frogs, rats, and even beavers, a hyperabundant ungulate has the most widespread impact.<\/p>\n

Sitka black-tailed deer were introduced to Graham Island\u2014the northernmost, largest, and most populous island of Haida Gwaii\u2014as a food source at least six times between 1878 and 1925. Aided by mild winters, a lack of natural predators, a low human population, and the browse-rich shrub landscapes left behind by clearcut logging, the deer population took off, rapidly reaching carrying capacity. New food sources were only a quick swim away, however, and by mid-century, the cervids had island-hopped to the archipelago\u2019s unpopulated southern terminus, grazing down forest understory and intertidal forage on all but the most isolated islands. In particular, overbrowsing severely suppressed the regeneration of ts\u2019uu<\/em> (western red cedar), considered the tree of life by northwest coastal peoples and a central element in Haida culture, used to craft everything from clothing, hats, and baskets to housing, canoes, and ceremonial poles. This led to mixed sentiments about deer among the Haida: they were appreciative of the food source but concerned about the deer\u2019s effects on berries, trees, and medicinal plants.<\/p>\n

\"Map<\/a>

Illustration by Mark Garrison<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cAs with our language, stories, songs, names, and lifestyle, the plants and their uses are very much a part of what makes us who we are,\u201d writes Haida cultural plant expert Barb Wilson in the epilogue of Nancy Turner\u2019s 2004 ethnocultural treatise Plants of Haida Gwaii<\/em>. An ethnobotanist and professor emeritus in environmental studies at British Columbia\u2019s University of Victoria, Turner collaborated with her friend Wilson and other elders to create a record of the traditional uses of a large catalog of plant species and their importance to the Haida. She sees initiatives like Restoring Balance as key to reinvigorating such knowledge. Turner explains that while there have been cumulative negative impacts from the loss of culture and language, they can be reversed by cumulative positive impacts. \u201cEco-restoration goes along with language revitalization and other acts of collaboration and reconciliation to bring about positive change,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Halting the destructive work of invasive species is a first step in that process. As Wilson once explained to me, \u201cWe\u2019re all interested in re-establishing an intact ecosystem, but if we don\u2019t do something soon, we\u2019ll be living out here on rocky outcrops with no plants. I don\u2019t want to leave that for my grandkids.\u201d<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s late June 2018 when I join Brown and Collinson on a two-day trip to compare deer-free areas in Juan Perez Sound with those occupied by deer. One of our main objectives is to see how the ecosystem on Ramsay has responded to last year\u2019s deer cull, but we\u2019ll make a few other stops. Our first destination is Kunga Island, where the forest is still very much the domain of deer.<\/p>\n

Anchoring our large, closed-cabin boat offshore, we take a small inflatable raft to the sloping pebble beach. Walking up, we cross a tideline scatter of kelp and driftwood before reaching the forest\u2019s edge. If we\u2019d landed here a century ago, we would have had to pry our way through a tangle of shoreline vegetation girding the trees: various grasses and shrubs, and a dense thicket of salal\u2014the leather-leaved relative of heather that is ubiquitous along North America\u2019s west coast. On a strand like this, salal is typically so thick you need a machete to clear a path into the woods, but we simply stroll unimpeded into what resembles an empty coliseum of massive brown pillars sprung from AstroTurf. While a thick canopy of red cedar, western hemlock, and Sitka spruce closes high overhead, on the spongy moss below grow just a few shin-high spruce trimmed into tiny cones as if a leprechaun were farming Christmas trees. It\u2019s a peculiar form of topiary\u2014a bonsai garden tended by deer. The presence of these miniatures means they were already established when deer first arrived over a half century ago. Since the animals eat the soft new growth that forms annually at the tip of each branch, they\u2019ve kept these decades-old trees stunted ever since. Once you understand such forest forensics, you start to see evidence everywhere.<\/p>\n

Farther inland stands another metric of invasion\u2014a fenced plot erected in 1998 to study plant growth in the absence of browsing. The exclosure is packed with ferns, berry bushes, shrubs, and small trees, a hint of what the understory in this old-growth forest once looked like. Outside the fence, where deer are free to frolic, I spin 360 degrees with hands outstretched and touch nothing but air.<\/p>\n

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