The Pacific IPCA Innovation Centre encompasses the Pacific Coast mountain regions of British Columbia (BC). This region is characterized by high biogeoclimatic diversity, including temperate rainforests, coast/marine ecosystems, estuaries, wetlands, montane/subalpine forests, alpine tundra, and glaciated peaks. Migratory salmon link forests and freshwater ecosystems to the ocean. BC is home to 204 First Nations communities including 34 Indigenous languages. Indigenous Peoples depend on salmon and other marine/freshwater species, diverse ungulate populations, berries, and native root plants. BC’s ecological abundance, stewarded for millennia by Indigenous Peoples, has suffered from colonial resource exploitation, including clearcut logging, industrial fisheries, mining, and hydroelectric dams. Indigenous Peoples are increasingly being alienated from traditional hunting, fishing, and gathering places, while large industrial farms and ranches encroach on remaining valley-bottom agricultural land for export-oriented production, compromising local and regional food security for all residents. Thus, BC’s coastal mountain regions face overlapping socio-ecological crises: Dwindling old-growth forests, declining salmon populations, endangered species, climate change (wildfires, floods, melting glaciers), loss of forestry jobs, rising food insecurity, and impacts of COVID-19 on tourism and service industries. Within Canada, BC is geopolitically distinct due to outstanding Aboriginal Rights and Title and a lack of Treaties. This has important political and jurisdictional implications for Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs), which have been pioneered by BC First Nations since the 1980s in the form of Tribal Parks.
