Town of Banff, Alberta viewed from Tunnel Mountain 1889 (Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies NA-66-062 and in 2011 (CW-2011-05-15-06). In this theme I focus on Banff National Park to describe the growing recognition that the natural ecosystems protected by parks and protected areas may have long been nurtured by humans. The changes in the Banff landscape over time, and seen in the above repeat photographs, provide excellent examples of how human nurturing– by burning, foraging and hunting created the long-term ecosystem protected by Canada’s first national park.
Indigenous peoples have long-influenced broad regional ecosystems through use of fire to create habitat for resources (plants, animals, and fish) and 2) hunting and foraging that alters resource abundance, particularly for favored prey species. The northwest region (NW) of North America provides an excellent study area to evaluate changes in these potential human influences due to the relatively recent colonization by Eurasians. This theme of the website considers Indigenous people’s seasonal rounds for eco-cultural biomes and describes current ecoregion mapping. Databases of fire frequency studies and historical journal accounts compiled at the ecoregion scale are then used to provide evidence that humans, through hunting, gathering, and culturing, were the keystone species that structured the food webs of eco-cultural biomes. Recent global-scale human population and technological growth are causing a rapid transition of these long-term biomes to “anthromes”, a set of globally-standard land use types of various levels of urbanization, agriculture, and forestry. These altered human ecosystem management practices are resulting in major changes in fire regimes and species abundance. However, broad areas of the Pacific Northwest remain in relatively “natural” condition and may be managed for ecosystem conservation. Indigenous people’s potential long-term keystone role should be understood, and possibly maintained or restored to conserve these landscapes.
Here’s a link to a progress report on background material to the nurtureBANFFnature theme as applied to the northwest of North America… I’ll poke along adding to this as time allows:
Download report “Biomes to Anthromes”
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