Half a billion dollars. That’s how much it could cost to pay out more than 1,600 mineral tenure claims that the outgoing provincial government approved within declared and proposed Indigenous protected areas across B.C. And it’s unclear who would be on the hook for those payments. 

In July 2026, the Lower Similkameen Indian Band issued a press release drawing attention to the issue. It found 37,498 hectares of mineral claims the province approved inside the boundaries of the the nʔaysnúlaʔxʷ Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA) since 2022, when the nation had declared its intention to protect it. The claims cover nearly a quarter of the proposed 150,000-hectare protected area, which would encompass most of the Ashnola River watershed near Keremeos, B.C.

Lower Similkameen Indian Band Chief Keith Crow said in the press release the tenure approvals amount to “a mockery of British Columbia’s constitutional duties,” adding it’s a violation of the province’s “obligation to interpret laws in a manner consistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.” 

But it’s not just the Ashnola where mineral claims have been approved inside of proposed protected areas. The Narwhal reviewed publicly available records of provincial mineral tenure approvals since the province passed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) in 2019. We overlaid that data with a map of all of the proposed and in-progress IPCAs in the province. Viewed together, the data shows that, over the past seven years, B.C. has approved 1,618 mineral tenures covering 594,987 hectares inside proposed Indigenous protected areas. 

Among these are dozens of tenures in two other protected areas that the Lower Similkameen has proposed inside its traditional territory. In the Ollalla Highlands area near the town of Hedley, B.C., the province approved 38 mineral tenures covering nearly 13 per cent of the area. In the Tulameen River watershed, west of Princeton, they approved 359 mineral tenures which cover 30 per cent of a proposed protected area. Nearly two-thirds of these tenures have been filed since 2025. 

Across the rest of the province, mineral tenures have been approved inside the proposed Stein Nahatlach protected area in Nlaka’pamux territory, Dene K’éh Kusān in Kaska territory and inside a number of proposed protected areas in St’át’imc territory. A large number were also approved inside the boundaries of T’akú Tlatsini, a protected area first envisioned by the Taku River Tlingit Nation in 2009 and declared in 2023. 

Mineral claims within protected areas make things complicated. A provision in B.C.’s Mineral Tenure Act requires claim holders to be compensated if the province renders their claims unusable by, for example, establishing a park or protected area. In 2022, this provision led the province to pay Imperial Metals $24 million to give up mineral claims the company said contained gold, silver and copper inside an area between E.C. Manning and Skagit River provincial parks.

According to an affidavit submitted to the B.C. Supreme Court in 2023, the “cost for compensating a mineral claim holder ranges from $250 per hectare to $850.” Applying that number to the 594,987 hectares of mineral claims the province has approved inside proposed Indigenous protected areas could put the high-end of the price tag for buying them all out at more than $500 million. 

B.C.’s recent election resulted in a change in government, leaving questions about the future of provincial support for Indigenous-led conservation efforts.

What’s Lorne Doerksen’s plan for Indigenous protected areas? 

During the election, Harlan Schilling, Chief of the Liard First Nation, one of the four member nations of the Kaska, raised concerns about how a change in government could impact a proposed three-million-hectare protected area called Dene K’éh Kusān.

After the votes were counted, those concerns persisted. And while Schilling congratulated premier-designate Lorne Doerksen, he also encouraged the BC Conservative leader not to let progress on the protected area backslide. 

“Dene K’éh Kusān was close to the finish line when the election was called,” he explained in a statement that was emailed to The Narwhal. “The groundwork is done and the public is behind it. We hope the new government will see the value of that work and help us complete it.”

But during the campaign, Doerksen promised to repeal DRIPA and open up lands to mineral exploration. The Conservative platform pledged to “make B.C. the fastest place in North America to permit a mine.” Doerksen didn’t detail a clear plan for conservation and new protected areas, but in 2024 his predecessor, John Rustad, said that if his party formed a government, it would “absolutely axe” the government’s plan to protect 30 per cent of lands and waters by 2030. 

Together, DRIPA and the 30-by-30 pledge have underpinned the province’s past support for Indigenous-led conservation. According to Torrance Coste, associate director of the Wilderness Committee, that combination is why the previous government considered IPCAs “critical” to both reconciliation and conservation.

“The water, lands and resource stewardship ministry, since that ministry has existed, has said [Indigenous conservation] is how we’re doing it,” he explained. But now, he’s not sure what Doerksen’s commitment to “supercharge the economy” through mining, forestry and other extractive industries, along with his promise to repeal DRIPA, will mean. 

Doerksen’s office did not reply to requests to comment on this story. But on Oct. 25, the morning after his party swept to a decisive majority election win, he renewed his promise to repeal DRIPA, describing it as one of his government’s top priorities. 

“We’re committed to doing it as soon as we can,” Doerksen said.

He also reiterated his pledge to support mineral exploration and mining as key engines of the provincial economy. Todd Stone, president and chief executive officer of the province’s Association for Mineral Exploration, said B.C. has “elected a government that has made mining a priority.”

Interim protections over in-progress Indigenous protected areas are set to expire 

While more than half a million hectares worth of mineral tenures inside of proposed IPCAs is a lot, there could have been even more had the province not closed regions to staking when it entered land use negotiations with First Nations like Taku Tlingit and Kaska. 

In June 2025, the province enacted two Environmental Land Use Act Orders and three No Registration Reserves covering large swaths of the northern part of the province as it started working towards establishing IPCAs in the area. Different legislation enables these two land use designations, but their effects are similar: they make it impossible to stake new mineral claims in certain regions.

But Lower Similkameen hasn’t been so lucky. According to the nation, they applied for a No Registration Reserve in the Ashnola in September 2024 but were unsuccessful. Since then, the nation has tracked dozens of new claims registered in the region. A whopping 88, covering more than 4,000 hectares, were issued on a single day: July 16, 2026. Lauren Terbasket, the nation’s lead negotiator for parks and protected areas, described it as “a gold rush” in an interview with the CBC.

In late September, the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs passed a resolution supporting Lower Similkameen during their annual general meeting. It calls on the province to “immediately establish, in accordance with the direction of the Lower Similkameen Indian Band, meaningful interim legal protection for the Ashnola that prevents registration of new mineral titles and mining activities within the nʔaysnúlaʔxʷ (Ashnola) watershed while long-term protection arrangements are advanced.” 

But with the new government expressing vocal support for mining across the province, getting interim protections for the Ashnola could be a challenge, so could keeping protections in areas like Dene K’éh Kusān, where Kaska hoped that the negotiations over the protected area would be finished by the end of this year. The election delayed that process, and now they’re not sure what a change in government might mean, especially since the restrictions over new mineral claims in the region are set to expire in January 2027. 

“Time matters,” Chief Schilling said. “We’re asking the new government to extend [the restrictions] while we finish the plan together. An extension keeps everyone’s options open and respects the years of work that the Kaska, the province and British Columbians have put into this plan.”

Legitimate claims or a ‘cash grab’? 

While the laws governing mining and conservation in the province may be in flux, the desire for minerals is not. According to the British Columbia Mineral and Coal Exploration Survey, spending on mineral and coal exploration in the province hit a record-high $751 million in 2025. That’s more than double the $327 million spent in 2019, when B.C. passed DRIPA, and more than the $643 million that industry spent in 2023.In Lower Similkameen territory, some of this spending has been focused on operations looking for copper, gold and platinum. Some of the largest claims are held by Adamera Minerals Corporation and a numbered company, 1000334153 Ontario Inc., which Vancouver-based mining company Auric Resources acquired in September 2025. Both companies are pursuing mining projects in the region, but neither responded to The Narwhal’s request for comment. 

The remaining claims in Lower Similkameen’s proposed protected areas are from a mix of corporations and individuals. Some of these, the nation worries, aren’t even honest attempts at mineral extraction, but attempts to profit if the province recognizes an Indigenous protected area in the Ashnola, which would likely require buying out claims. 

“It is hard not to see this as a cash grab by mining companies ahead of a formal Crown conservation designation in the area,” Janet Terbasket, an elected councillor with Lower Similkameen, said.

Staking claims without plans to actually develop them — for example, to hold the land in hopes of a payout when a protected area is created — is called nuisance staking. B.C.’s Mineral Tenure Act doesn’t explicitly mention the practice, although it does have a provision against staking mineral claims inside established provincial parks and protected areas. Instead, the Chief Gold Commissioner, the provincial office responsible for overseeing mineral claims, has the power to extinguish nuisance claims. But since proving nuisance staking requires understanding the intent of a claim, successful cases proving it are rare.

“There’s one of two possibilities,” Jessica Clogg, executive director and senior counsel at West Coast Environmental Law said. “One, the miner simply doesn’t believe that the Crown will ever take effective action to protect the Indigenous protected area. The other possibility is that even if it’s not mining for compensation, there’s at least the sense that there’s no harm in doing it because they’ll be compensated on the back end. There’s no risk.” 

But the province, which would have to compensate claim holders, faces considerable financial risk. So do First Nations who are leading conservation efforts in their territories. 

In 2023, the B.C. government announced a $300-million fund to support Indigenous-led conservation. 

According to the BC Parks Foundation, who administers the fund, $1.1 million was granted to the Lower Similkameen to pursue protections in the Ashnola. But, as Andy Day, the foundation’s chief executive officer, explained in a statement to The Narwhal, “the B.C. Conservation Fund cannot be used for a provincial obligation regarding compensation.” 

“Its primary purpose is to fund sustainable, reliable, long-term stewardship of priority biodiverse areas in B.C.,” Day said. 

But even if that money were available to buy out mineral claims in the Ashnola, $1.1 million wouldn’t go that far. If the historic range of compensation costs are applied, buying out the 37,498 hectares of tenures that have been approved inside the region could cost somewhere between $9.3 and $31 million.

It’s not clear who would be expected to foot that bill if the province recognizes the Indigenous protected area. In 2024, for example, when the province recognized an Indigenous protected area in Clayoquot Sound, the non-profit Nature United had to raise $40 million for the Tla-o-qui-aht and Ahousaht Nations to compensate the forestry-tenure holder, Mamook Natural Resources, for the loss of that tenure. That wasn’t provincial funding, but private and philanthropic money. And, as Coste explained, that’s money that wasn’t “available for nations to hire guardians to manage those protected areas, or to do restoration work or to build tourism infrastructure.”  

Of course, buying out claims depends on the province continuing to pursue IPCAs. And while mining and mineral exploration advocates have expressed concerns that these protected areas create delays and uncertainty for the sector, Chief Schilling thinks that Indigenous protected areas like Dene K’éh Kusān actually help provide clarity for industry. 

“The Kaska recognize how important resource development is to our communities and to the northern economy,” he said. “The [Dene K’éh Kusān] plan sets out clearly where the land is protected and where responsible development can go ahead, with the Kaska as partners.”  

Not only that, he explained, the process so far has been “built through give and take, with input from industry.” The Kaska have “worked with the province and with claim holders to address their interests.”In June 2026, those negotiations led Kaska to agree to a nearly 20 percent reduction in the size of Dene K’éh Kusān, with the new boundaries excluding a number of mineral claims that had previously been approved inside the original IPCA boundaries.

“That clarity is good for investment, good for northern jobs and good for the land,” Schilling added. 

Lower Similkameen and Taku Tlingit have made similar statements. They’re not opposed to mining outright; they just want to have a say in the process. The question now is what kind of say the new provincial government plans to give them, and what that means for mining, conservation and First Nations. 

Advocates point to long standing issues with British Columbia mining law 

Among the questions the new government will have to answer about Indigenous Rights, mineral tenures and conservation, is what it plans to do about the province’s Mineral Tenure Act. Passed in 1988, the act can trace its roots back to the province’s 1859 Gold Fields Act, a piece of colonial legislation that, at the height of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, introduced a “free entry” mining system, allowing open claim staking on what the province considers Crown land.According to Nikki Skuce, director of the Northern Confluence Initiative, the province “committed to repeal and replace the Mineral Tenure Act in co-operation with Indigenous Peoples,” after passing DRIPA in 2019. That promise was formalized in 2022 in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act Action Plan, which included modernizing the Mineral Tenure Act as one of the listed priorities. 

But while that work was supposed to move forward through something called the Mineral Tenure Act Modernization Office, the website for that office hasn’t been updated since 2024. It’s not clear why the process hasn’t moved forward, but Skuce thinks it could be related to a court case brought by the Gitxaała Nation and Ehattesaht First Nation in 2023 that challenged the province’s mineral staking regime.The case argued that B.C.’s “free entry” mining system, which since 2005 has allowed prospectors to trade a literal stake in the ground for an online system where they could buy claims for $1.75 per hectare, violated both DRIPA and Section 35 of the Canadian constitution. 

The court ruled that the mineral tenure process, which approved claims filed online without consulting First Nations “created adverse impacts on the petitioners’ Aboriginal Rights” and called for changes to the system. 

The province responded by implementing the Mineral Claims Consultation Framework in 2025, requiring registered claims to go through a consultation process with local First Nations. According to a pamphlet circulated to First Nations about the policy, nations would be “invited to share any concerns about how registering the claim may impact their Rights and Title, including those related to culture, spirituality, environment and economy.” 

But according to the Lower Similkameen, the consultations on the approved claims in the Ashnola were cursory, at best.

“Following a tight 30-day response period, the mining ministry made the decision to approve the mineral claim registrations without even speaking to Lower Similkameen Indian Band leadership,” the First Nation’s press release said.Mineral exploration advocates have also been critical of the process. In a report published in early 2026, the Association for Mineral Exploration argued that consultations had created “serious new challenges and roadblocks for explorers.” 

The report decried “long, unpredictable timelines, reduced confidentiality and unclear processes [that] all make it harder for explorers to plan projects and raise money” before calling for “immediate intervention … to improve performance and ensure a sustainable claim staking system for British Columbia.” 

And the association might get its wish, because while the previous government created the consultation framework in 2025, it also launched an appeal of the Gitxaała court ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada the following year.  

“Instead of following through on its commitment, [the province] is appealing that decision,” Skuce explained.

The new provincial government is likely to continue with that appeal, and, according to the Association for Mineral Exploration, be a friendlier ear for industry. What that all means for the convergence of First Nations rights, mining and conservation remains to be seen. But with 1,618 mineral tenures already approved within IPCAs and the new government promising more land access to mineral exploration companies, it won’t be simple to resolve.

Updated Friday, Nov. 13 at 6:31 p.m. PCT: This story has been updated to add the date that mineral tenure and proposed Indigenous protected area data was sourced from public databases. Maps denoting the mineral claims in Kaska territory are being updated to reflect changes in Dene K’éh Kusān boundaries made in June 2026.

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On a grassy slope in Kanaka Bar, a herd of goats frolic and play. But this isn’t a farm or a petting zoo — it’s an innovative wildfire mitigation effort from the First Nation.

Some of the goats loudly bleat as they chow down on invasive species and overgrown brush. 

“In the last five years, Kanaka community has been experiencing devastation with fire,” Pauline Michell told The Narwhal.

That includes two evacuations due to wildfires, as well as floods and mudslides that have closed roads and cut off her community from the world. And in Kanaka Bar, there is no fire truck or fire hall. “Kanaka has solely been on its own in regards to fire,” said Michell.

Located in Nlaka’pamux territory, 20 kilometres south of Lytton, Kanaka Bar Indian Band also goes by T’eqt’ aqtn’mux, “the crossing place people.” 

In 2021, the Lytton Creek wildfire devastated the area, evacuating numerous First Nations for years, while burning structures and homes to the ground. 

Later that year, an atmospheric river raged through the Fraser and Thompson Rivers, washing out roads and cutting people off from leaving Kanaka Bar.

According to a new report from the office of the B.C. human rights commissioner, between 2000 and 2024, First Nation reserves accounted for 36 of 37 communities where at least half of the total land area was burned by wildfire, with the only non-reserve community being Lytton.

Further, First Nation reserves in B.C. are four times more likely to be impacted by wildfire than non-reserve communities. 

This prompted Michell, an elected councillor in her community, to take a proactive approach to the wildfire season. 

Since late July, a herd of goats have been eating their way through the Kanaka Bar Indian Band, targeting areas with built up fuel and brush that would burn up in a fire. 

About 80 goats have been clocking in this summer, while a few goats like Dandelion and Cuddley are part of a rebel club in their own separate enclosure.

“This is a trial for Kanaka, to look at fuel management in this way,” said Michell. 

“Hearing about these goats being able to do this sounded really intriguing and interesting,” she added.

The idea came by accident, after an area grazed by sheep acted as a fire stop during a wildfire three years prior.

“Back in 2023, the Kookipi Creek fire came through … We had been grazing the sheep that we had out in this back area, and when that fire came through, it actually came pretty much all the way down to community, and then it stopped where the sheep had been grazing,” Emma Bryce told The Narwhal.

She recalled thinking, “This is really cool, we just kind of made our own fire break without really intending to.”

Bryce has been the nation’s food self-sufficiency lead since 2022, and after the sheep experience, started researching different animals to graze in the community.

“In conversations with chief and council, I brought it up and was like, ‘What if we used goats to do wildfire risk reduction?’ They were like, ‘okay, let’s do it.’” 

“This goat grazing project has been a passion project of mine for the last couple of years,” Bryce said, after she took the green light from Kanaka and ran with it. That’s when she met Bruce Bradley, who does contract work across B.C. with his herd of goats. 

Based on Vancouver Island, it took three trips by ferry to bring his herd to the mainland and then to Kanaka Bar this summer. But the Ainslie Creek and Brunswick Creek wildfires impacted initial operations back in July. 

As of Sept. 11, those wildfires remained burning 31 kilometres down the road from Kanaka Bar, though they  are now contained. Once it was safe, the goats got to work. 

Goat grazing benefits for biodiversity and wildfire

The goats have grazed about 12 hectares of ground since arriving in the community earlier this summer.

“We’re trying to get in all the nooks and crannies, especially around the houses and around the roads, the important spaces to make them more defensible and resilient to fire,” Bradley told the Narwhal.

On top of reducing wildfire risk, “the ecological benefits are huge because the goats are trampling, they’re fertilizing … and they’re especially effective for invasive weeds.”

“We’ve tackled this year quite a bit of Canadian thistle, Himalayan blackberry and Scotch broom.” 

Bradley’s been deploying his fire-mitigating goats since 2018, through his company BC Timber Goats.

“It’s a very unique tool, and I think a powerful tool to get wildfire risk reduction benefits and silviculture benefits on the same site, at the same time,” he said. 

According to the B.C. government, silviculture is “the thoughtful, deliberate and balanced management of forests and surrounding local ecosystems” that encourages tree diversity to increase resilience against threats like pests, climate change and disturbances.

The idea to start a goat grazing business came from Bradley’s experience in farming.

“I grew up on a farm that had lots of weed control issues. I’d always spray and mow, and we’d break the mowers. I’d get sick with the spray and so I thought, there’s got to be a better way,” he said.

Bradley said that in areas of the farm sprayed with pesticides, “everything would just turn brown, and half the time it would burn in wildfire in the summer.” 

Goat grazing achieves similar outcomes as pesticide use but is much healthier for the environment.

According to the University of Calgary, which piloted a goat-grazing project at their main campus last year, “targeted grazing is a proven land-management technique that uses livestock to naturally control vegetation growth. Unlike herbicides, which can have a lasting environmental impact, goats provide a natural way to reduce unwanted plant growth while encouraging native vegetation to thrive.”

Animals grazing through southern Interior communities has become less common with wildlife populations declining.

“Using goats actually mimics what you would have typically seen if you had large herds of elk moving through. … Goats mimic a natural system that this landscape would have evolved with already,” Bryce said.

An addition to the FireSmart toolbox 

Over the summer, the goats have been working alongside Kanaka Bar’s fuel management crew.

As the FireSmart team gathers fuel and brush into a pile, the goats eat until it’s gone. It’s a win-win situation: feeding the goats and disposing of the community’s built-up fuel.

“I don’t think there’s ever going to be a scenario where we don’t need people out on the ground, going out and doing the bigger fuel management,” Bryce said, adding goat grazing complements other fuel management strategies. 

“They can go in and defoliate, which is great to have more visibility when you’re out there working in really dense brush,” she said. 

Bryce and Bradley estimate the goats haven eaten 0.25 hectares of ground each day. They’re scheduled to wrap up their work on Sept. 21.

“The goats are going in and doing a really efficient job at something that is really challenging to do with just human crews alone,” she said. 

When the project was first brought forward to the community, residents were interested in learning more about it, but not exactly excited about goats – that quickly changed.

“Now it’s to the point where members want a couple of goats to tackle the brushes in their yard as well, so that’s really good,” said Michell.    

“When wildfire comes to Kanaka, we’ll be more prepared.”

Updated on Sept. 16, 2026, at 11:11 a.m. PT: This story has been updated to correct the dates that the goats are in Kanaka Bar.

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Osoyoos Indian Band is working to revitalize forests in its territories that have been ravaged by wildfires — turning them into fire-resistant zones full of biodiversity, wildlife and medicinal plants for its members.

Band-owned company Nk’Mip Forestry is planning to revive two woodlands located above the First Nation’s reservation in the highlands between Oliver and Mount Baldy — making up just over 40 hectares combined. The forest tenure where the project is located is approximately 50,000 hectares in size, and is co-managed between the Osoyoos Indian Band and Gorman Bros.

The two forests — a drier Douglas fir ecosystem with ponderosa pine, and a montane spruce ecosystem dominated by dense lodgepole pile further up the hill — were both impacted by the 2021 Nk’Mip Creek wildfire, which is estimated to have burned just over 20,000 hectares.

After the fire, Vernon Louie, an Osoyoos Indian Band member and grounds operation manager with Nk’Mip Forestry, said animals in the area were displaced.  

“Twenty-plus years ago, there used to be deer and elk all over. Lots of moose up here, especially up Baldy you’d see them. Almost one every time you’d go up,” Louie told IndigiNews.

“Now, you’d be lucky to see a deer if you go up.”

These animals, he said, were forced to look for food sources at the valley bottom. Now, after five years, they’re starting to return to the highlands.

“But they need better ground, and more stuff to eat,” he said. “We want them to actually come back up and settle. But you gotta give them the opportunity to do that by clearing this stuff out.”

The first phase of the project’s operations, scheduled for late summer and into the fall, will see the burned, still-standing dead timber removed from both sites, to help make space for the planting of various berry and shrub plants, as well as deciduous and native trees.

“What we’re really doing here is trying to influence a bit of a change in this post-wildfire landscape, to encourage wildfire resiliency and ecosystem resiliency in the future,” project lead Eden Hardcastle, a forester-in-training with Nk’Mip Forestry, told IndigiNews.

“Instead of using the word restoration, I’ve used the term intervention.”

The dead timber will not be salvaged for profit, however. Instead, the trees will be processed into firewood materials for the community.

While both sites have unique planting prescriptions based on their ecosystems, there are prioritized shrub and deciduous tree species that will be planted across both areas.

The prioritized shrub species planned for planting include saskatoon berry, soopolallie (soapberry), huckleberry, thimbleberry and snowberry. Introducing deciduous trees such as birch, cottonwood and trembling aspen to the landscape is also part of the strategy.

“Most deciduous trees and shrubs are going to be really important for a live fire break,” Hardcastle said.“Not only do they retain more moisture, but they’re significantly less flammable, so it can really help slow down a fire.”

Having a diversity of species is critical for ecosystem adaptability, not just wildfire resilience, she said.

“We’re in a changing climate with changing external stimuli. Different trees — well, different plants, in general — can contribute different things to the ecosystem. Having that diversity is important for not only recovery, but long-term resilience in the area.”

Biodiversity in post-wildfire landscapes key to climate resiliency

Although lodgepole pine is a native tree, the species has taken over the site of the montane spruce ecosystem site. Hardcastle attributed its overgrowth to the tree’s serotinus pinecones that spread seeds after a fire sweeps through an area.

“When a fire comes through, that heat catalyzes to drop its seeds. That means that lodgepole pine comes back really fast and really thick after a fire.”

While it is a natural process, Hardcastle noted that it “also creates a bit of a fire hazard in the future, because that stand is really dense and very flammable.”

That’s why reintroducing biodiversity to the forest “is the key,” she added, for it helps with future climate resiliency. 

“It’s not just wildfires that put stress onto our forests. It’s temperature changes; it’s precipitation changes; it’s further human disturbance. Biodiversity helps with all of that. Some species are more resilient to some things than others. It contributes to overall tolerance to change.”

In addition to planting deciduous trees and different shrubs at the montane spruce ecosystem site, larch and douglas fir trees will also be planted there.

“Unfortunately here, we have nothing but lodgepole coming back. That was part of the decision-making there, Hardcastle said. “If we were getting species that we did want to see coming back naturally, we weren’t going to disturb it at all. That’s a process that we’re looking for.”

Once the dead trees have been removed, the plan is to invite Osoyoos Indian Band community members to help plant different trees and shrub species at the sites next spring.

The vision is to remove the dead trees from the forests while retaining the live ones, which will create more space and give shade for different trees and plants to grow, Peter Flett, the head of forestry operations at Nk’Mip Forestry, told IndigiNews. It will also help to attract more wildlife back to the area.

“More shade helps mitigate the heat from climate change. It keeps moisture in the soil. It helps shade-tolerant plants grow.”

The hope is to offer an abundance of food and cultural experiences for community members: more animals to hunt and a greater selection of berries and medicines to harvest.

Restoration project offers hope for community and future initiatives

Hardcastle said the project can act as a model for future similar initiatives and demonstrate how it can be applied on a larger scale. The project is being funded by Environment and Climate Change Canada, through their Climate-Smart Forestry grant, which is being administered by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative.

“Hopefully, in doing this, we can determine what that actual cost looks like for the future,” she said.

Hardcastle emphasized that the purpose of the restoration and intervention work is for the betterment of the Osoyoos Indian Band community.

“It’s for the environment, but this forested area is part of [Osoyoos Indian Band’s] culture,” she said.

“We also wanted to make sure that it was road-accessible, because we want this area to be usable as a foraging site for some of the shrubs that we’re planting. Like, for berries and other culturally significant plants.”

Louie said that Elders in the community have berry-picking spots across the two sites, and have given “all thumbs-up” for this project.

“This work is definitely needed. They want to see it restored. To restore it, you gotta take out the old stuff.”

“Berry picking, hunting, gathering, is really important.  Some of these areas are close to existing roads — the easier access for Elders, the better.”

Following the intervention, Hardcastle said she hopes to see an improvement in species composition, to show more biodiversity across the two sites, within the next five years.

“It would be great to see more wildlife up here,” she said.

“That short term is going to be really telling for what we did right and what we did wrong. Long term, I just hope it’s beneficial for the environment and the community: create a fire break, and create a pocket of diversity in an area that has very little diversity.”

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Nine-year-old John Smithers cradles a tiny burrowing owl in his hands, preparing to release it into the grasslands of Upper Nicola Band territory.

Like other young syilx people, he’s grown up hearing stories about the small birds of prey that have nearly disappeared from his Thompson-Okanagan homelands in the last century or so.

The owls – known in syilx culture as guardians, guides or messengers – were “once a common element” in landscapes stretching from the southern Interior of B.C. all the way to Manitoba, according to Canada’s Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife. 

Now, burrowing owl sightings are rare. In 2003, the Government of Canada listed the burrowing owl as endangered under the federal Species At Risk Act. According to the Burrowing Owl Alliance, the bird’s population in the country has declined by over 96 per cent since 1987. Experts link the bird’s decline to the gradual loss of its grassland habitats over the last century. 

“Lots of animals can come and get them,” Smithers said about the lack of protective habitat for the burrowing owl. 

Aware of the owls’ importance and decline, earlier this year Smithers became N’kwala School’s annual student ambassador to a regional burrowing owl recovery program that’s being led by the First Nation. 

As ambassador, he was invited to be the first person of the year to release a captive-born burrowing owl into the wild on April 22, in his home community of spax̌mn (Douglas Lake) in B.C.’s Nicola Valley.

The release, which coincided with Earth Day, marked 10 years since Upper Nicola Band began releasing captive-born burrowing owls onto their homelands.

In return, those captive-raised owls have produced 125 “wild-born” baby owls — or fledglings — since being released from the community’s restoration site.  

Despite high winds and the risk of ticks, dozens of excited people from all age groups turned out in high spirits for the release. 

Students, nature enthusiasts and Elders alike shared laughs and smiles at the sight of the precious birds, with their round heads, short stature and long legs.

Framed by grassy hills, Smithers released the owl under the warm sunshine with the help of Dawn Brodie, one of the main field technicians who has been involved in the program since its inception.

The nervous bird nearly escaped from his grasp and into the open air. But thanks to the quick reflexes of the adults around him, helping hands connect the captive-born owl back to the land and down an artificial nesting burrow that had been prepared by the Upper Nicola Band stewardship department.

“Soft” is the word Smithers used to describe the feeling of holding the owl. 

Soon after, several guests in attendance – from program partners to youth and Elders – were invited by the field technicians to release an owl down different burrows that were created by the recovery program and its partners.

Some of the owls wore amusingly bewildered expressions as they waited in the gentle grasp of human hands before being placed into a burrow.

In total, 11 captive-born owls — six males and five females — were released into five of the site’s 35 artificial burrows that day. They are all just under one year old.

“The program has exceeded all our expectations,” Loretta Holmes, an Upper Nicola Band member and senior resource technician with the band’s stewardship department, said.

“The owls, which we call sq̓əq̓axʷ, have responded better than we dared to hope ten years ago. And community interest and involvement has been strong since the start.”

Owls released into artificial burrows filled with frozen mice

The tiny burrows are connected through a network of underground tunnels hidden under the grassland hills above spax̌mn. 

Each artificial burrow consists of a small, corrugated tube in the ground that serves as its entrance, which feeds into the larger network of tunnels. The entry points are camouflaged in the field by grass and large rocks. 

Before any captive-raised owls are released, handfuls of frozen mice are inserted into the burrows and tunnels.

“That helps them not have to go as far to hunt as often. It encourages them to lay more eggs, and helps them rear their young ones when they’re hatched,” Holmes said.

Once released, the burrow entrances are closed off for a few days, explained Chris Gill, a project biologist with the band’s Species-At-Risk program.

“It’s to let them acclimatize and calm down, basically. And potentially bond with the mate that’s in there,” Gill said.

Breeding gets underway as soon as two owls choose each other as mates, and Gill said that eggs are laid in June.

The burrow tunnels, which protect the owls from predators, are connected to a nest box. The nest box has an opening at ground level, allowing technicians to observe how many eggs have been laid and monitor activity. 

Technicians also attach leg bands to the newly-hatched birds here, to track future migration.

Mice are also delivered to the burrows two to three times a week. Holmes said that this type of care results in nests that carry nine to 10 eggs — more than the average of six to eight laid by burrowing owls in the wild.

The mice are “giving them a big head start and maximizing the chances of producing healthy fledglings, and healthy parents as well,” Gill said.

The owls stay in the site’s burrow network anywhere from four days to up to a week, depending on weather conditions, and are then free to fly around in the open air.

“They mostly stick at the site, even after you release them out of the burrow, because they’re now used to the site,” Gill said.

“They may have paired up, or they may choose another mate from the site.”

By July, fledglings will start to emerge from the burrows, and the owls usually start to migrate south in September and October. They’ll return to the breeding sites next April.

Tracked migration data from burrowing owls who left the site in previous years revealed that the birds travel as far as San Jose, California.

“It’s just so amazing that they went all the way somewhere, wintered in those conditions and came back,” Holmes said. 

“It’s wonderful.”

Owl recovery “one piece of a larger puzzle” in restoring ecosystem health

In the last decade, more than 100 burrowing owls have been raised in captivity at the Kamloops Wildlife Park by the Burrowing Owl Conservation Society, before being released at spax̌mn. There’s a site in Oliver that supports the program as well.

The captive-raised owls all come with identification tags on their legs, which are documented by field technicians before they are released into the burrows.

Many of the 120-plus wild-born owls have left the Upper Nicola Band site and returned, including four who came back this spring; two males and two females, three of which were born at the site last year.

While the conservation efforts are helping to re-populate the burrowing owl species in this part of the country, Upper Nicola Band views this work as only one piece of the larger puzzle of how to protect the community’s rare and sensitive grassland ecosystem habitats. 

By stewarding these ecosystems — and restoring and supporting the biodiversity that has been depleted — it’s also an act by the band to protect their cultural identity and fulfill generational responsibilities around caring for the land and for all living things.

“Conserving a species at risk, like a burrowing owl, it’s about far more than a single bird or species. It’s about upholding relationships, responsibilities and balance with the living world,” Holmes said.

Animals like the burrowing owl are part of an interconnected system that has sustained Indigenous Peoples for generations, she said.

“If one species declines, it signals that the relationship between people and the land is out of balance. Conservation becomes an act of restoring harmony and respect in that system,” she said.

“Protecting species at risk aligns with Indigenous laws that emphasize caretaking. Conservation efforts honour the principle that decisions made today must ensure the healthy lands and wildlife for our relatives yet to come.”

It’s just one of many projects under the community’s stewardship department’s larger Species-At-Risk program, which is designed to protect and restore endangered species populations on their lands.

The program also looks at restoration efforts for species including the American badger, Lewis’s woodpecker and Great Basin spadefoot — all of which have been federally recognized as threatened or at-risk. 

Penticton Indian Band — a fellow syilx community that’s under the Okanagan Nation Alliance (ONA) along with Upper Nicola Band — also released burrowing owls through their own similar program that same week.

“In British Columbia, burrowing owls are extirpated. That means that they’re not actually existing on the landscape without reintroduction programs, like the Upper Nicola Band’s,” Gill said. 

But Traditional Ecological Knowledge gathered from Elders and advisors confirmed that burrowing owls historically existed on the spax̌mn landscape.

In 2015, a year before the burrowing owl recovery program launched, the Species-At-Risk team conducted surveys on reserve lands to determine a suitable habitat for the birds. 

They settled on the grasslands above the Upper Nicola Band community as the reintroduction program’s site.

“We found suitable habitat for burrowing owls — but no burrowing owls present,” said Gill.

The birds traditionally nested in the underground burrows that were dug and abandoned by different animals, from badgers to marmots and coyotes, he said.

But because of a lack of badgers, there weren’t any natural burrows out on the land.

“That’s why the Upper Nicola Band put in these artificial burrows,” he said.

“There are actually badgers on that reserve, but there are very few — and far in-between — so we can’t rely on a burrowing owl finding a badger burrow.”

According to the province, “several small” burrowing owl nesting sites were identified in the Okanagan and Thompson valleys from 1900 to 1928. 

Historical nesting areas include Osoyoos, Oliver, Penticton, White Lake, Lower Similkameen Valley, Vernon, Kamloops and Douglas Lake.

But between 1928 and 1980, only four nesting sites were recorded.

The federal government attributed the “conversion of grassland to cropland” as the “ultimate factor responsible for the decline in burrowing owls.” It estimates that the species experienced a 90 per cent population decline from 1990 to 2000.

Also contributing to the owl’s population decline is the “gauntlet” of issues they face on their migration route, Holmes said.

This includes fatalities occurring from collisions with wind turbine farms and motor vehicles. Pesticides targeting insects and rodents that the birds feed upon indirectly poison them as well. 

In 2004, the estimated population of burrowing owls in Canada was recorded at 795 mature individuals. In 2015, it had plunged to approximately 270. 

Burrowing owl populations are “in a nose dive,” Gill said.

He called the burrowing owl “a canary in a coal mine” in measuring the state of ecosystem health.

“A badger, a burrowing owl — those species are the indicator species. If they’re not doing well, then that’s a sign of something bigger that’s not doing well,” he said.

Upper Nicola Band’s grassland ecosystem is “incredibly resilient,” but grasslands across Canada are critically endangered 

Along with Holmes and Brodie, Gill helped initiate the burrowing owl reintroduction program 10 years ago. He called the two women “the work horses” of the program.

“We monitor the owls, and write really good data collection on it,” said Brodie, a veterinary technician who supports the program as a burrowing owl consultant.

The program has been a success, Gill said, not just because of the region’s “great grasslands.”

“But it’s also the stewardship that’s going on with these owls,” he said.

“It’s one of the most productive sites in B.C. for releasing our fledging owls.”

In the wild, burrowing owls can live anywhere from four to six years, according to Lauren Meads, the executive director of the Burrowing Owl Conservation Society of BC. 

Meads, who was joined at the release event by the society’s 11-year-old educational burrowing owl, Pluto, added that in captivity they can live up to 15 years.

According to the Government of B.C., grasslands made up less than one percent of the province’s land area in 2004, adding that “only a small percentage of our grasslands are protected.”

But grasslands surrounding the Upper Nicola landscape are “some of the most intact and incredibly resilient grasslands” Gill has observed, he said.

“Grasslands are one of the most endangered ecosystems in Canada. … They’re very, very rare. It looks like we have a lot, but this is one little spot,” he said.

Holmes added that protecting grasslands also protects the burrowing owls. 

“That’s their home. It works hand-in-hand,” she said.

Owl conservation, protection is a cultural responsibility 

Holmes said that the burrowing owl’s population decline and status as an endangered species is not just an ecological matter, but a cultural issue as well. 

sq̓əq̓axʷ are a “symbol of our cultural identity,” she said.

“Owls can be messengers, teachers or indicators in an Indigenous knowledge system. They’re often associated with observation, protections and indicators of change.”

The loss of burrowing owls “erodes the stories, the teachings and our ways of understanding the land that has been passed down through generations,” she added.

Upper Nicola Chief Dan Manuel said in a statement that burrowing owls are deeply woven into syilx culture.

“For our people, the cultural, spiritual and environmental importance of sq̓əq̓axʷ are one,” Manuel said.

“Our culture is rooted in co-existence with the world around us. We have a responsibility to care for the land and the beings on it. We must help rebuild what has been lost, and it will continue to support us.”

Holmes said that having a dedicated conservation program fulfills those duties that are owed to the land and to all living beings. 

“It treats our relatives with respect,” she said.

“The land, the animals, the plants — everything that’s there — provides us with sustenance. So it’s our responsibility to take care of them as well. We see all those things as our relatives.”

She emphasized that Indigenous Peoples have inherent responsibilities as stewards of their territories — responsibilities that originate in syilx laws, teachings and oral traditions, also known as captikʷł. 

“That predates colonial conservation frameworks,” she said.

Upper Nicola Band Elder Casey Holmes thanked all the staff and volunteers involved in the community’s stewardship program, especially for their work in supporting the restoration of the burrowing owl population.

“People are making a difference. Even if it doesn’t look like a difference, they made a difference today, to make this a success – to make this a part of history that we’re not losing,” said Casey.

When the community loses a tmixʷ (all living things) relative, Casey said that “we lose a part of history.”

“Bringing back this, is regaining back that history,” he said.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Summary

• In 2024, an extreme cold event caused many B.C. wineries to lose most of their grapes. In response, the province allowed wineries to join a program allowing the import of U.S. grapes, a practice usually reserved for larger commercial labels. 
• The full rules about how sales of wine made with U.S. grapes would be taxed were released months after wineries had already bought foreign fruit. Each winery got a sales tax exemption on a specific quantity of wine — after that, taxes could reach as high as 89 per cent. 
• These taxes apply to all sales for as long as wineries sell any wine made with U.S. fruit, even if the actual bottle in question is made with 100 per cent B.C. grapes. The result, winemakers say, is losing out on years of profits and, possibly, going out of business.

The program offered a lifeline when the forecast was unequivocally dire. In January 2024, temperatures dropped below -25 C in B.C.’s Okanagan, Thompson and Similkameen Valleys — the province’s agricultural breadbasket. 

The cold snap in the Interior came right after unseasonable daytime highs of 10 to 13 C. The weather whiplash hit the area’s fruit trees hardest: acres of peaches, pears, plums, apples and nectarines were damaged, with the plants’ buds dead come spring. The ripe, juicy produce tourists flock to the Okanagan for in summer and fall never arrived.

The deep freeze also crushed one of B.C.’s most prized commodities: wine grapes. More than 90 per cent of the Interior’s annual harvest was lost, which meant nearly 90 per cent of the province’s total vineyard acreage. Suddenly, a $3.75-billion industry was in crisis. 

“There were zero grapes,” Paul Sawler, vice-president and general manager of Dirty Laundry Winery, a mid-sized winery in Summerland, B.C., recalls. The winery’s 100 acres of vineyards produced almost no fruit.

“Where we would normally see 300 to 400 tonnes [of grapes], we got less than half a tonne from all the vineyards combined,” Sawler says.

The solution seemed clear at the time: “There was no way to survive except to buy Washington State grapes.” 

In British Columbia, alcohol is regulated by the BC Liquor Distribution Branch, a government body long assigned to the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General. In July 2025, it was transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food — a nod to the realities of producing a weather-dependent consumer good in an increasingly volatile 21st-century climate. For winemakers and grape growers, who had seen several difficult years of damage to their vineyards from extreme weather, it was a welcome move.

Under the liquor branch’s policy, certain wineries — mostly larger operations that hold a commercial winery designation — are allowed to import foreign grapes to complement their B.C. fruit. Often acquired from the U.S., these grapes produce wines that the liquor branch taxes at high sales mark-ups — the dollar amount the branch charges a winery when it sells its wines directly to consumers, restaurants or other distributors.

Regulations normally prevent most small and mid-sized B.C. wineries from purchasing foreign grapes. This is part of the liquor branch’s complex policy, which involves different regulatory and taxation systems not just for different types of wineries, but also for direct-to-consumer sales versus sales through the liquor branch. The short version is that independent, “land-based” wineries are required to use exclusively B.C. fruit, in exchange for which a good chunk of their sales are tax-exempt. 

After the 2024 freeze, the liquor branch relaxed these rules, allowing a wider range of wineries to import grapes to salvage their businesses. But bringing in foreign grapes meant signing on to a program that limited each winery’s tax-exempt sales. 

“We really had no choice,” Sawler says of his decision at Dirty Laundry. Though most Okanagan wineries were committed to making B.C. wines with B.C.-grown grapes, the weather had decided for them. 

“If we didn’t buy the grapes, we would have had to lay off half our staff,” Sawler says. “We probably would have had wine to sell at the winery, but we would have lost our whole outside market — a market that we spent the last 20 years building.”

So, Dirty Laundry and 91 other wineries in the area rolled the dice and brought in foreign grapes to make their 2024 wines. 

“I don’t regret buying them,” Sawler reflects. “The quality was good; the pricing was good. It worked out well.” 

But the decision has come with a latent — and significant — unanticipated cost. The limit on wineries’ tax-exempt sales was based on a complicated calculation many did not understand at the outset. In fact, some didn’t understand they’d be subject to mark-ups at all. Now that the program is in its second year, some wineries have wine they can’t sell without a significant financial hit.

“A program that was basically designed to help wineries, in some cases may actually kill some wineries,” Sawler tells The Narwhal. “Those are extreme cases … but it is happening”

“We know how devastating the 2024 freeze event was for grape growers and wineries in the Okanagan and we’ve worked together with the B.C. wine industry to help them recover,” Minister of Food and Agriculture Lana Popham told The Narwhal in an emailed statement. 

“The Liquor Distribution Branch will continue to work closely with wineries and Wine Growers BC.”

A program that brought wine flowing back into B.C. has soured

The vintage replacement program, or just “the program,” as many in the industry refer to it, was first announced in July 2024 and laid out in fine print in a liquor branch memorandum that October. Importantly, this was after most wineries had already purchased U.S. and foreign grapes. 

For the 2024 vintage, the BC Liquor Distribution Branch would permit wineries that opted in to the program to purchase foreign grapes or a partially fermented product known as unfinished juice, and would treat any wine produced from those products the same as B.C.-grape wine. That meant the liquor branch would offer the tax exemption usually reserved for certain types of 100 per cent B.C. wine to all B.C. wineries using foreign grapes.

This main component of the program was a success. Wineries like Dirty Laundry and many smaller, newer wineries kept their staff, juiced their grapes and made wines they were proud of. The wider industry, which supports a substantial economy of restaurants, hotels, hospitality workers, supply companies, migrant agricultural workers and small family businesses remained afloat.

But the details were a shock to many.

The exemption wasn’t a blanket exemption. Each winery had what was known as a “support cap,” or a limit on tax-free exemptions. Wineries’ individual caps were based on an “Olympic average” of five years of previous mark-up exemption totals — for land-based wineries, of their B.C.-grape wines; for commercial wineries, of B.C.-grape wines certified by the BC Wine Authority’s Vintner’s Quality Alliance, or BCVQA. This was a dollar value calculated by taking the mark-up exemption on sales numbers from the past five years, dropping the highest and lowest numbers, and averaging the three remaining years. 

Sales over that limit were taxed at the liquor branch’s standard rates for foreign-grape wines — as high as 89 per cent on the first $11.75 of the wine’s per-litre value, and 27 per cent after that. 

The calculation didn’t pose a problem for many commercial wineries used to importing foreign grapes — and selling huge volumes. It was also doable for many established wineries that had relatively steady sales over the period in question and dedicated accounting departments. It did pose an issue for many newer, growing independent wineries, though. 

Another surprise was how long a program meant to help with one bad year was going to last. The ability for wineries to buy foreign grapes for tax-exempt wine was extended for the 2025 vintage, to account for any lingering cold snap effects on the province’s vineyards. Additionally, once participating wineries brought in foreign grapes, they were tied to the vintage replacement program until they’d sold every last bottle of wine containing U.S. grapes.

This all means the support cap will remain in effect until March 2028, to account for the added year of foreign grapes, and sales of wines that take longer to produce, like reds or sparklings. 

All that, and the mark-up exemption limit each participating winery received was not exclusive to its U.S.-grape wines. Post-limit taxes would be applied to all the wine a participating winery sold. 

Let’s say a winery had 5,000 cases of U.S.-grape wine — “replacement” wine — left to sell, starting this year. That newer stuff would likely share shelf space with bottles of carefully cellared, 100 per cent B.C.-grape wine from years past, too. Signing onto the program meant this B.C.-grape wine would count toward the winery’s annual mark-up exemption limit. Which means that once the winery hit the annual limit set by its Olympic average, this 100 per cent B.C.-grown-and-produced wine would be taxed the same way as malbec from Argentina: at up to 89 per cent. 

In an emailed statement on behalf of the liquor branch, the Ministry of Agriculture said that “to ensure revenue neutrality and fairness across the sector, the annual support cap … includes all wines sold within the fiscal year, including vintage replacement wines, BCVQA and 100 per cent B.C. grape wines.” 

The ministry added that a support cap based on historical sales data was recommended by Wine Growers BC.

“From the outset, there were very clear guidelines communicated to the wine industry about eligibility and annual support caps, and it was intended to help the industry keep the lights on during a very serious agricultural emergency,” Minister Popham told The Narwhal.

“It is in everyone’s interest to return to producing 100 per cent B.C. wine production.,” the liquor branch-attributed statement concluded.

Small, new B.C. wineries suffering the most under program’s limits

Paul Sawler’s neighbour in Summerland, Ron Kubek, started Lightning Rock, a small, family-owned business just up the road from Dirty Laundry, in 2017. It’s grown steadily ever since. 

“I think the problem in the wine business is that too many people in ownership or in the tasting room want to show how smart they are,” he says. His greatest pride is his winery’s consistent five-star ratings on Google, which show that everyday people appreciate Lightning Rock’s approach.

“Wine is supposed to be something that’s enjoyed among friends and family. Some of my favourite reviews are, ‘It was my first time in the tasting room and they didn’t make me feel dumb.’ We can talk about the technical stuff, but we’d rather just have fun.”

Kubek hasn’t shied away from sharing his views on the program, which his winery also opted into after losing its 2024 harvest. 

“We’re still small, but we’ve experienced tremendous growth, from just a few bottles in 2018 and 2019 to [when] the pandemic hit and wine sales went through the roof,” he tells The Narwhal. 

But that initially promising upward trajectory is now proving an impetus to further growth. The program calculated Lightning Rock’s mark-up limit using the low sales volumes of its early years, and now the winery isn’t eligible to sell much tax-exempt wine.

Kubek says his situation is “not because we brought in too many grapes from the U.S. — we brought in about 60 per cent of what we would normally do in a year after the catastrophic [harvest] loss — but because … [the liquor distribution branch] took what was a simple program and misapplied the Olympic average to help jack up revenues and get their bonuses.” 

Lightning Rock’s speciality is single-varietal wines, a large portion of which are reds and sparklings that take several years to age. That means Kubek will likely have to remain in the program until 2028. As a result, he has to carefully calculate the amount of wines from previous B.C. vintages he can sell each year without losing too much profit.

“The problem is that my previously B.C. [tax-]exempt wines are now being taxed or in danger of being taxed,” he says. “So I’m trying to grow, but I have a limitation, because if I do grow, I’m suddenly hit with an 89 per cent tax.” 

So Kubek, like many Okanagan winery owners, was holding back sales in March when he spoke with The Narwhal — waiting anxiously for the liquor branch’s fiscal-year turnover of April 1 to reset his mark-up limit. For a small winery with hard-won personal relationships with restaurants and other distributors, the cost is significant. 

“I’m having to tell my sales agents, ‘Hey slow down on sales,’ because I’m very, very close to going over my Olympic average and then suddenly I’m going to be paying 89 per cent tax on a bottle of wine.”

Kubek says he would have been able to sell an additional 1,000 cases of wine in the last fiscal year if it weren’t for his mark-up cap.

In response to The Narwhal’s questions about these limitations, the agriculture ministry noted, “While some wineries accessing the temporary supports have exceeded their annual cap and are facing payment obligations, many other wineries planned their operations around the annual support cap or chose not to access the temporary supports. Any changes to the policy directives or requirements mid-stream would not be fair to these businesses.”

Kubek feels frustrated. “I lost all my fruit. I had to pay for fruit to come in and now the government’s penalizing me if I try to grow.” 

He believes the program has hurt wineries like his the most. 

The support cap clause in the vintage replacement program was meant to prevent some of the Okanagan’s biggest wineries from bringing in more cheap foreign grapes than they normally would while paying below-normal sales taxes, Kubek says. It was supposed to prevent these grapes from flooding the B.C. market, which could have changed the industry’s local fingerprint and provided an unfair advantage to some. 

But what the government feared never happened, and the little guys are the ones now being hurt, Kubek says. He pointed to two wineries under the same ownership — Kelowna’s Mt. Boucherie Estate winery and Rust Wine Co., a smaller winery in Oliver — which confirmed they have had to lay staff off as a result of tax bills currently exceeding $500,000.

The agriculture ministry told The Narwhal, “In recognition of the payment obligations for those that exceeded their cap last fiscal, the [BC Liquor Distribution Branch] will continue to work with wineries to explore flexible payment arrangements within reasonable timelines.”

B.C. wine industry is pushing for solutions to a complex situation

Jeff Guignard is the CEO of Wine Growers BC, the primary industry marketing and lobbying organization for B.C. wines. He has heard his fair share of complaints about the vintage replacement program, including from Kubek, who he speaks to nearly daily. He also speaks with the provincial government every week, trying to find a solution for wineries who say the taxation approach has pushed them to the financial brink.

“This program was an essential lifeline to industry in a moment of generational crisis,” Guignard says. “It literally saved people’s businesses. There are wineries in B.C. that would not be in operation without this program. So we’re immensely grateful to government for that.” 

But, he adds, “It’s now clear — because things were rushed, and though everyone was doing their best — that the program has had some unintended consequences.” 

Guignard says the constraints built into the program for good reason are now injuring the very people and businesses the program was designed to support. 

“The constraint is acting as a limit on sales,” he says. “You could be selling, right now, a 100 per cent made-and-bottled-and-grown-in-B.C. wine, that was bottled years ago, prior to the freeze, and prior to the program being developed. But it counts against your business as though it were part of the program.” 

Guignard says the problem with the program is its one-size-fits-all approach, when the province’s wine industry ranges from huge, established players like Arterra Wines Canada or Andrew Peller Ltd., which both own multiple wineries, to medium-sized operations like Dirty Laundry and smaller newcomers like Lightning Rock. 

He says he knows of over a dozen wineries that have gone over their support cap and received invoices from the provincial government — businesses being treated “as though they were importing foreign wine into the province.”

“The program was designed to help you not have to do that,” he says, adding that one person told him, “ ‘I wish I hadn’t brought any fruit in. I would have had no wine, and I would have had to lay off all my staff, but my business would actually be in a better place, financially.’ ”

Adding to the challenge is the fact that the 2025 grape harvest in the Okanagan and Similkameen was — to everyone’s surprise — highly productive. Many of the vines that had survived the cold freeze produced abundant fruit, but grape growers unattached to specific wineries were left without customers. Businesses trapped in the “golden handcuffs” of the program, as Guignard terms it, weren’t buying, because they weren’t looking to make new wines they couldn’t turn a profit on. 

With growers, too, facing financial hardship, the program has in some ways simply deferred the crisis it was trying to prevent. The crucial support the program offered when the industry seemed on the brink of collapse has turned into an albatross hanging over some winemakers’ necks. 

“From a Dirty Laundry perspective, I’ve taken the position that if I had 1,000 cases of imported wine left over at the end of March next year, I’d dump it before I’d stay in the program another year,” Sawler says. “That’s the amount of impact it’ll make on our winery. We’d be better off to throw the wine away or to sell it for nothing … to make it go away.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Summary

• Indigenous women in B.C. are leading projects and organizations committed to mitigating wildfire risk and restoring traditional practices. 
• Cultural burns are making a comeback in the province, thanks to years of advocacy from Indigenous firekeepers.
• First Nations women in the province’s Interior are decolonizing fire management through their work.

In 2017 Jaci Gilbert was 12 years old when she was evacuated from Tsq’escen’ First Nation because of a wildfire. Four years later, more wildfires impacted her community, located in B.C.’s central interior, prompting some Elders to be evacuated to the Lower Mainland.

Gilbert, who is Secwépemc and Tsilhqot’in, volunteered both at the emergency operations centre during the partial evacuation in 2021, and as a fire camp logistics assistant near 100 Mile House during those fires.

“After being involved in the emergency operations centre I caught the bug of wanting to do emergency and wildfire management,” Gilbert told The Narwhal.

Gilbert works for First Nations Emergency Services Society as a cultural and prescribed fire specialist. She is part of a cohort of First Nations women in B.C. who are leading the way in wildfire management in their communities — demonstrating leadership and stewardship as blazes continue each year.

Being a young person, and a woman, Gilbert struggled to get into the field of emergency management, but reaching out to organizations and women in the field is a good place to start, she said.

“Youth have been managing emergencies in their personal lives for a long time, especially Indigenous youth, so using these skills I developed on reserve I’m able to handle [emergencies] well, whereas with a typical office or customer service job I don’t handle [those] very well,” Gilbert said.

“We’re seeing a shift in dynamics. I’m noticing a lot more Indigenous women in fire research and in the fire community.”

Indigenous firefighters bring cultural knowledge to their work

Sheresa Brown, a Nlaka’pamux woman from Lytton First Nation, has been involved with fire since firefighting in high school. Brown works as a field technician and archaeological monitor with Nlaka’pamux Nation Tribal Council, specializing in protecting cultural heritage values.

After her hometown Lytton, B.C., was devastated by fire in 2021, Brown evacuated to Merritt and was looking for a job when she called her former boss from the BC Wildfire Service. 

Back on the frontlines, Brown noticed a crew member cut down a culturally modified tree in Vernon, commonly referred to as a CMT, to clear a pathway for a hose. 

“[First Nations] make that [symbol on the tree] so they can come back to harvest the sap, they can use it to make different types of medicines. And it was a very utilized tree that just got cut down,” Brown told The Narwhal.

She recommended scanning for culturally modified trees before clearing to her crew lead, who received it well. A year later Brown was deployed on another fire near Lytton, teaching BC Wildfire Service crews about the land’s cultural values.

She said she’s willing to take people on the land if they are willing to learn and be respectful, noting that sometimes people do not know they are in a culturally significant area, especially when firefighters are deployed from another province or country. 

“I know if a man can do it, I can do it too, and probably even better,” Brown said, reflecting on her experience being a First Nations woman in the fire industry.

Bringing back cultural burns

Brown and Gilbert are carrying the torch lit by trailblazers in the field like Leona Antoine, who has 30 years of experience. Antoine is a Nlaka’pamux woman who is no stranger to cultural burning or firefighting. 

She practices traditional burning, is a registered forest technologist, a Type 1 (or first-response) firefighter with the BC Wildfire Service, and is a board director and chair of the Salish Fire Keepers Society. 

When Antoine’s firefighting journey with the BC Wildfire Service began in the early 2000s, she was one of few women on a 20-person unit crew. 

“Because there were no women on the crews before, they didn’t know how to have a woman around,” Antoine told The Narwhal.  

“It took probably about a month for the crew to get used to women being on the crew. You know, putting all the women’s posters and magazines away,” she said. 

Although men on the crew were initially uncomfortable around women, and had to be taught boundaries, “I broke those barriers,” she said. 

Another barrier at the time was getting the province and general public to see the value of cultural burning. B.C. was the first province in Canada to ban the practice in 1874.

After a year of devastating fire in 2017, and following the release of a report Addressing the New Normal: 21st Century Disaster Management in British Columbia in 2018, cultural burns started being taken more seriously by the province, with official amendments to the Wildfire Act in B.C. to support the practice taking effect in 2024.

This is work that the Salish Fire Keepers Society has been advocating for since its inception in 2016. The non-profit is made up of Interior Salish nations who experience some of Canada’s hottest wildfires, and promotes the restoration of cultural burning practices.

Gilbert contributed to a cultural burning guide, Workbook to Create a Cultural Burn Pathway, made in partnership with the Indigenous Leadership Initiative. 

“As I’ve become more involved with emergency and wildfire management, cultural burning comes up a lot, especially as an Indigenous person that’s interested in Indigenous solutions to modern problems,” she said. 

First Nations Emergency Services Society is an emergency management non-profit organization in B.C. “We were initially created as a result of a lot of Indigenous deaths related to structural fires,” Gilbert said during her presentation at the Salish Fire Keepers Society gathering in Kamloops on Mar. 17. 

The workbook guides readers through different considerations when planning a cultural burn, and was created through a series of community interviews by Amy Cardinal Christianson and Natasha Caverley.

“My role in [its] creation has been trying to make sure that it’s accessible for First Nations. I’m not much on the technical side, I’m … looking at the art and how that can help tell the story for people without strong English backgrounds,” she said.

During the March 2026 gathering, Antoine and the rest of the society’s board gifted each guest speaker with sweetgrass and sage, two traditional medicines among many First Nation cultures across Canada. 

There were many women in attendance, underscoring how things are beginning to shift.

This is an initiative she championed. “We are taught by our Elders when you ask for information or stories, you validate their teachings and what … they have taught. You honour them with medicine,” she said.

Prioritizing traditional protocols, ceremony, and medicine at this year’s fire gathering is an example of how Antoine brings balance to the fire space.

Not only has she broken down barriers for women to come after her, she also creates opportunities for those in the fire industry to connect, heal, and share knowledge – work that can be forgotten for those in the heat of fire. 

Antoine said “we’re in fire dependent ecosystems, the land needs fire.”

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Summary

• A recent gathering of the Salish Fire Keepers Society brought together over 100 experts and community members to discuss the role of fire on Indigenous territories in Interior B.C.
• Over a century of fire suppression practices have left Interior B.C. vulnerable to catastrophic wildfires, like the one that destroyed Lytton in 2021.
• Indigenous firekeepers advocate for the use of cultural and prescribed fire to manage risks and restore balance to ecosystems.

In 2022, one year after wildfire tore through the Village of Lytton, a blaze broke out at the nearby Stein Valley Nlaka’pamux Heritage Provincial Park.

The site, co-managed by Lytton First Nation and the B.C. government,  contains pictographs, petroglyphs and culturally modified trees, along with more important cultural sites.

So the BC Wildfire Service called in Sheresa Brown, a 31-year-old Lytton First Nation member who works as a field technician and archaeology monitor with the Nlaka’pamux Nation Tribal Council. When fires happen near registered archaeological sites, Brown works with BC Wildfire Service crews and structural protection specialists to safeguard cultural heritage. 

“I was all for it,” Brown says. “But I wanted to do it in the right way.”

To avoid the pictographs washing away from firefighting efforts, Brown outlined a 75- to 100-metre buffer zone around the cultural site. 

Sprinklers were set up around the buffer zone, and crews watched as the sprinklers stopped the flames from reaching the pictographs.

“That really helped me confirm that this was a good idea,” she said.

In other wildfires, she has helped to determine which registered archaeological sites are within a fire’s boundaries and are along its projected path, directing crews where to work. For example, she will advise where heli-pads can be constructed to avoid cutting down culturally modified trees, and will guide where hoses can be laid to protect artifacts — such as arrowheads — on the ground.

“We make sure that everything is done in a very respectful way,” she said.

Brown was one of more than a dozen experts and technicians drawn from the realm of Indigenous fire stewardship — from researchers to Indigenous land managers and fire practitioners — who gave panel talks at the Salish Fire Keepers Society “Reigniting The Land” spring assembly on March 17 and 18. Around 100 people attended in-person in Tk’emlúps (also known as Kamloops, B.C.) in Secwepemcúl’ecw, with more tuning in virtually.

The panel discussions ranged from protecting cultural heritage sites and values in the event of wildfire, to the experiences of youth engaged in cultural burning and different approaches to land management post-wildfire. 

While honouring the work of their ancestors and the efforts by Indigenous firekeepers in recent decades, the gathering also gave insight into the role that Indigenous youth are having in the future of fire stewardship and emergency response.

Resources around building capacity for community-based fire stewardship and emergency response initiatives were also highlighted, and there was dialogue in bridging opportunity gaps between the BC Wildfire Service and Indigenous communities.

“We need to collaborate with our people. We need to share. We gotta look at those imaginary lines and get rid of those, and work together,” George Campbell, a Nlaka’pamux Nation member from the Boothroyd Indian Band, said. Campbell is a wildfire officer for the Fraser Fire Zone with the BC Wildfire Service.

Fire Keepers Society brings Indigenous nations together to share knowledge, experiences

Comprised of Elders, youth, Knowledge Holders and firekeepers from Salish communities — including the Nlakaʼpamux, syilx, Secwepemc and Stʼatʼimc Nations — the Fire Keepers Society is a grassroots initiative that started in 2016 as a means to promote awareness around culturally prescribed burns throughout the province.

The society annually hosts a spring and fall gathering, where they aim to build connections between Indigenous nations by sharing knowledge, and promoting and supporting fire stewardship opportunities in different communities.

“We as nations, need to be working together,” Tiffany Traverse, a Secwepemc Nation member who serves as one of the society’s board of directors, said.

“We have shared territories. We have shared family members and family lineages.”

Fellow board director Darian Edwards, a Stʼatʼimc Nation member from Tsʼkwʼaylaxw First Nation, said that the society is looking to build support and create opportunities for Indigenous youth around fire stewardship initiatives in their respective communities.

“Youth are going to be taking over the work. They are going to be stewarding our lands after us,” Edwards said.

A century of fire suppression

Before settler colonialism outlawed the use of fire on the land through legislation such as the provincial Bush Fire Act of 1874, Interior Salish Nations had been prescribing fire to the land for thousands of years. 

Burn cycles were designed to nurture certain landscapes and ecosystems, often to sustain diversity for hunting areas and to promote the growth of berries and medicinal plants — which all supported various ceremonial purposes.

This work of regular burning ultimately helped to maintain the ecological health of the land by limiting overgrowth and mitigating fuels.

However, settlers and their rapid fire suppression practices effectively removed fire from the ecosystem in the last century. This has resulted in the spread of trees across landscapes that were not historically forested, all of which has led to the accumulation of wildfire fuels and debris across landscapes.

“Those managing forestry are not aware of the historical ecology of our lands and how they were changed through a century of fire suppression and how they were afforested,” Jennifer Grenz, a Lytton First Nation member who is a restoration ecologist and assistant professor at the University of British Columbia, said.

In the past, she noted, “so much of our territories didn’t have trees all over them.”

“They were not meant to be these high-density, single or two-species tree plantations that they were transformed into,” she said.

Grenz made the comments during her panel presentation on the restoration work she conducted following the 2021 McKay Creek wildfire that broke out near Lilloet in St’at’imc territory.

Last summer, four years after the fire, she and a team of researchers found that burned landscapes are at risk of invasion by fast-growing, fire-prone invasive species of grasses.

However, they also identified historic berry-gathering areas that had once been cultivated and maintained by Indigenous people. 

These sites were sprouting in locations that were impacted by the fire, and did not see any human intervention efforts post-fire.

“Several areas have managed to survive being forested for tree plantations and these mega-fires to remind us of these very large areas that people created — that our people created,” she said.

While many of these areas are recovering on their own post-fire, she noted that “those are the first places that we’re seeing tree planting occurring.”

“The provincial government is going in and planting on top of these areas,” she said.

“This is where I really feel like there’s a really important piece for us to take back greater territorial land management, and find these areas and assert them, as these are our historic berry-gathering areas, food areas. And we don’t want to find trees planted on top of them.”

Grenz said that Indigenous communities know that the mega-fires of today “are not our fires.”

“This is just a totally different level of trying to figure out what to do next,” she said.

‘It’s really important to expose our youth to this work in a good way’

During a panel discussion led by three Indigenous youth, Skuppah Indian Band member Amber Wilber from the Nlaka’pamux Nation said that there’s a lot of trauma in her community around fire, especially among youth.

Skuppah Indian Band is located just two kilometres south of the Village of Lytton, which was the site of a devastating wildfire that swept through the area in 2021 and burned down 90 per cent of the village. Nearly five years after the fire, communities in the area, such as Lytton First Nation, are still in the process of rebuilding their homes and infrastructure.

“I’d love to see that fear of fire shift to a respect for fire — learning that fire can be a tool that we can use to manage our land, and help bring balance to it, instead of something to be feared,” Wilber, who is in her second year working with BC Wildfire Service, said.

Wilber said growing up, she used to watch from inside her family home as her dad and grandpa burned patches of land outside to support berry harvesting. She would later help her uncle with fuel management work — it was her uncle who taught her that the practice is “an important tool that brings balance to the ecosystem.”

“Not only when it comes to fire prevention and fire management, but also, creating balance in an ecosystem for birds, for elk as well, in our local area. Making way for them to travel through our forests, and giving birds good nesting places,” Wilber explained.

“We also use fuel management and cultural burning in our area as a way to knock down the tick population, because they can be quite pesty in the spring.”

She described this experience as a young person practising and revitalizing fire stewardship knowledge in her community as “eye-opening.”

“It’s really ignited a connection to the land in a way that I don’t think I ever would’ve gotten anywhere else,” she said. 

“It’s very unique, and it makes me have a lot of appreciation for traditions and cultures. It makes me feel connected to my ancestors in a big way.”

She advised Indigenous youth to get involved in cultural burning “in any way you can” — from listening to family members, to seeking out firekeepers in their communities. 

For the more seasoned firekeepers in the room, she encouraged them to involve their youth in burns, no matter the size of the fire. 

“Bring them out, even if it’s just a small job,” she said. 

“It’s really important to expose our youth to this work in a good way. And let them see your mistakes as well. … Later on, they’ll have that experience, too. They’ll have more grace for you and understanding. It’ll help them feel a little more humanized as well.”

A workbook to educate on cultural burns

Last summer, the First Nations’ Emergency Services Society (FNESS) and the Indigenous Leadership Initiative (ILI) released their “Worksheets To Create A Cultural Burn Pathway” workbook, which is both a physical and digital resource designed to guide Indigenous Nations in creating cultural burn programs within their community.

The workbook is the product of multi-years of community based-research, where more than 50 Elders and Knowledge Keepers were consulted, with additional input coming from gatherings and workshops.

Jaci Gilbert, a prescribed fire specialist with FNESS from the Secwépemc and Tsilhqot’in Nations, contributed to the workbook and gave a presentation about it during the Fire Keepers’ gathering.

“The aim of the workbook is to help nations navigate cultural burning with the impacts of climate change. We are not seeing the indicators that we’re used to, or seeing them at different times that don’t align with our burn windows,” Gilbert said.

“We hope that this workbook will help nations do burning in this new time.”

The workbook is divided into seven worksheets. The ILI, however, recognizes on their website that, “cultural fire is culture and location specific. So instead of a prescriptive approach, each worksheet poses a set of questions and prompts that can be answered collectively.”

Amy Cardinal Christianson, a Cree-Métis senior fire advisor for the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, helped lead the development of the workbook. 

She appeared virtually at the gathering, and said that the workbook has been used by Indigenous land guardian programs, such as the Kainai Nation’s (Blood Tribe) fire guardian program.

“It’s a really easy resource to use for communities. It also talks a lot about the importance of governance,” Christianson said.

She said that Indigenous fire stewardship is not just limited to culturally prescribed burns.

“Yes, culturally burning — but it can also be firefighting, emergency response, post-fire recovery,” she said.

“It’s any activity where Indigenous people are asserting their jurisdiction and exercising their rights related to fire on the land.”

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Indigenous leaders from the Similkameen Valley are “deeply disappointed” by a provincial decision to approve a contentious mine expansion in their territories — emphasizing that they did not give consent for the project to move forward.

On Monday, the B.C. government announced it had issued Mines Act and Environmental Management Act permits for the New Ingerbelle expansion of the Copper Mountain mine near Princeton, B.C., in smǝlqmíx (Upper and Lower Similkameen Indian Band) territory.

The expansion project will see the century-old mining operation revive its old Ingerbelle open-pit gold and copper mine site near nməlqytkʷ (the Similkameen River). The expansion will extend the mine’s operation until 2047, the province said.

In the province’s statement, it acknowledged that the mine is in the Upper and Lower Similkameen Indian Bands’ territories.

“The permitting review process included engagement with both First Nations, along with technical review by provincial agencies to assess environmental impacts, tailings management and public safety,” it said.

However, a joint statement issued Monday by leadership of both bands says that “chiefs, councillors, natural resource departments and community members of the bands did not give consent for this project to move forward.”

“The smǝlqmíx and our neighbours that choose to be here forever will have to deal with the consequences long after the profits and monies have left the valley,” said the statement.

“The chiefs and councils of the Upper Similkameen Indian Band and the Lower Similkameen Indian Band are deeply disappointed by the Province of British Columbia’s decision … to approve the New Ingerbelle Expansion Proposal for the Copper Mountain mine.”

The First Nations noted that participation agreements they signed with the mine earlier this month “expressly state that advance consent to New Ingerbelle was not provided.”

The new participation agreements with the mine that were signed by the bands replace older ones that were signed in 2019. They include “community benefits and environmental terms related to the mine operations and protecting the Similkameen River,” “stability and certainty” for mining operations and “structured processes” between Upper and Lower Similkameen and the mine “to work together on monitoring mine operations and mitigating its environmental impacts.”

The bands said they will now review the approval conditions and reasons for the decision, and “assess all available options to ensure that the waters, all living things and the lands will be taken care of.”

Separating the Ingerbelle pit from the mine’s main site is the 197-kilometre-long Similkameen River. Part of the expansion project will see a bridge constructed over the river to connect the two sites.

The mine’s already existing 192-metre tailings dam — roughly equivalent in height to a 58-storey building — will also be increased by an additional 87 metres, according to the province’s Environmental Assessment Office (EAO).

Meanwhile, Robert Carter, senior vice-president for Hudbay Minerals’ operations in Canada, thanked the province and the Upper and Lower Similkameen “for their open and efficient collaboration throughout the process.” 

“Through our strong commitment to responsible resource development and the expansion of copper production from Copper Mountain, we will be continuing to provide a metal that is vital for electrification and the global energy transition and supporting B.C.’s Critical Mineral Strategy,” Carter said in a release on Monday.

The project’s approval comes less than a month after the Ministry of Mining and Critical Minerals told IndigiNews that the expansion proposal still required further consultation with the Upper and Lower Similkameen.

The spokesperson also said the expansion plan had to “meet or exceed B.C.’s world-class environmental standards.”

Last May, a pipe failure at the mine site resulted in 3,000 litres of mine tailings seeping into an area beside the Similkameen River. The B.C. Ministry of Environment and Parks told IndigiNews that it’s unknown if the mine water entered the river or was absorbed into the ground.

In 2024, the provincial Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy issued six fines to Copper Mountain mine totalling $105,348. 

The string of offences, which occurred between 2019 and 2022, all relate to the mine’s unauthorized seepage and discharge of mine water from its tailings pond into the surrounding waterways of the Similkameen River and Wolfe Creek, which both flow through the mine’s area of operation.

In 2021, the mine at one point exceeded the legal limit of copper waste discharged from its tailings pond into Wolfe Creek by more than 4,500 per cent.

Two years ago, one Lower Similkameen member spoke of a time where you could drink the water from Wolfe Creek, which is a tributary of the Similkameen River. Despite a series of mine contamination events into the creek, a senior representative for the Copper Mountain mine told the community that she would still drink the water.

In January, a province-wide council of outdoor recreationists declared the Similkameen River among the province’s most endangered rivers – citing the mine’s expansion as the main threat to the waterway.

Last November, y̓ilmixʷm (Chief) kalʔlùpaɋʹn Keith Crow of Lower Similkameen told regional officials that leaders were failing the Similkameen River, which “had been black for the last month” due to poor water quality. 

Lower Similkameen Elder Rob Edward listed the mine as one of the reasons for the river’s decline. He noted that he hasn’t been able to fish out of the Similkameen River since 1982. 

In 2022, Crow told IndigiNews that the Similkameen River is the lifeblood of the valley.

“If we lose that, we lose our identity. We lose who we are,” he said.

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First Nations fish hatcheries on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border are celebrating 10 years of a collaboration to help salmon blocked from migrating by dams and other threats.

Last month, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Washington transferred more than 6,200 chinook salmon eggs from their Chief Joseph Hatchery to the Okanagan Nation Alliance’s kł cp’elk’ stim’ Hatchery in snpink’tn (Penticton, B.C.), nearly 200 kilometres north.

This year marks one decade since the two tribal hatcheries started working together to restore the fish’s population throughout the Columbia River Basin.

The partnership has seen Colville Tribes send more than 115,000 eyed chinook eggs to the Okanagan Nation Alliance over the past 10 years. One year alone, 2019, saw 40 per cent of those eggs transferred north.

“They don’t have to do that; they don’t have to give us anything,” Tyson Marsel, a biologist at kł cp’elk’ stim’ Hatchery and member of Lower Similkameen Indian Band, said.

“But for them to recognize that this is for the betterment of the environment and conservation, it’s not only helping us, but it’s also helping them.”

As salmon grow in their eggs, the dark spots of their eyes become visible through their shells — a stage early in their development known as the “eyed eggs” period.

Salmon have been a vital source of sustenance for Pacific Northwest Indigenous nations for thousands of years. 

But several salmon species, particularly sockeye and chinook, have seen their runs and populations severely depleted across the Columbia River Basin in the last century. 

As settlers built numerous dams along the waterway, they effectively blocked the fish from migrating up-river and into its tributaries. 

Salmon populations have also been impacted by habitat loss, overfishing and warming water temperatures linked to climate change.

Whether it’s sk’lwist (summer-run chinook) or ntitiyx (spring-run chinook), the fish have for decades become stuck at the Chief Joseph Dam on the Columbia River in Washington, which lacks a fish passage route.

Opened downstream to the dam in 2013, the Chief Joseph Hatchery catches adult fish blocked by the dam to collect their eggs. It’s part of a broodstock, or fish-breeding, program that spawns nearly three million young chinook each year.

“They’ll be collecting millions of chinook eggs in a year,” Marsel said. “Versus us, our best year is 10,000 that we’ve collected from the Okanagan River here.”

The salmon eggs sent from the Colville Tribes’ hatchery roughly doubled the Okanagan Nation Alliance hatchery’s chinook population compared to last year, when it had just 6,500.

kł cp’elk’ stim’ Hatchery stores the transferred roe in an incubator, where water temperatures are gradually increased from 3 C to 10 C over the course of a few weeks, to help support their development.

The fish were expected to hatch around the end of January, and will remain housed at the hatchery until June. Once they weigh between three to five grams, the Okanagan Nation Alliance plans to release them into suwiw̓s (Osoyoos Lake).

The adult fish are expected to return between 2029 and 2031.

Although much of the Okanagan River has been channelized — engineered to straighten the waterway — there’s a more naturally flowing portion north of Osoyoos Lake, in the town of Oliver, B.C.

It’s there that Marsel said the fish like to spawn. 

Even if the fish can make it up-river past Osoyoos Lake, they’ll still reach the Chief Joseph Dam and Colville hatchery downriver.

“Some of our fish that we’ve released from our facility have gone into Chief Joseph Hatchery’s program,” Marsel said.

He added that “every fish counts,” especially when it comes to chinook. The species is a key cultural figure for the syilx Okanagan Nation, being ntytyix (Chief Salmon) of the Four Food Chiefs.

“People don’t realize how rare they are, and a lot of people don’t even know that there’s chinook in the system,” he explained.

While much attention has been paid to sockeye salmon restoration efforts, Marsel said chinook hold a particularly important place in the culture.

“For the syilx Nation and all the people here, it means so much more,” he explained. “Not that sockeye aren’t important, but ntytyix holds a lot more meaning.”

The partnership to help chinook recover by sharing eggs hasn’t just transcended the border, however. It might also be helping transcend some political divisions between First Nations.

In recent years, the newly established Sinixt Confederacy — under the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation — has at times been at odds with Okanagan Nation Alliance over legal and territorial claims related to the historically displaced Sinixt people, and which tribal council represents their descendants. The Okanagan Nation Alliance has asserted that the Sinixt people have always existed as part of the larger syilx Nation rather than as its own entity.

During the hatchery partnership’s decade, the tensions have resulted in chinook egg transfers being withheld, Marsel said — but he firmly believes the two tribal governments realize working together for salmon outweighs their inter-governmental disagreements. 

“We have this same common goal,” he said. “Working together is what’s going to make it better.”

“To have the collaboration is extremely important, not only for the people but definitely the environment, the salmon [and] everything that thrives off the salmon.”

But long before the two modern-day tribal organizations were formed, Marsel said Indigenous communities in the region always supported and traded with one another.

“We have family down in Colville Confederated Tribes,” he said. “There was trading constantly across that imaginary line that’s now put up.”

“It’s not like this is a new thing where we’re working with Colville Confederated Tribes — but it’s exciting that now we’re working together for a common goal, and that’s conservation.”

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Growing up in Nlakaʼpamux and syilx territories in the 1970s, Joe Gilchrist can’t remember a single summer when wildfire smoke ever trapped him indoors. 

The Merritt, B.C., region’s semi-arid landscape still saw scorching summer temperatures back then, the Secwépemc Nation member recalled, but not the record-breaking fire seasons of recent years. 

“That was thanks to our work that the Indigenous ancestors did on the land,” Gilchrist, who now lives on Skeetchestn Indian Band’s reserve with his daughter, said. 

“Then, everything was still fairly spaced out; the fires were easier to handle.”

Although settlers’ wildfire suppression efforts had become the dominant form of land stewardship when he was young, Indigenous communities in the Nicola Valley were still using fire to “cleanse” the land, Gilchrist said.

Cultural burning was a key part of Indigenous land stewardship for thousands of years, he told IndigiNews. “It was all across Canada — it used to be done to the north, the south, the east and west.”

Sharing his knowledge at the UN climate talks in Brazil

Now in his 50s, Gilchrist is playing a leading role in uplifting and advancing his ancestors’ fire-keeping traditions — and sharing that wisdom far beyond his own nation’s territories. 

But he didn’t always conduct burns. For three decades, Gilchrist served as a professional firefighter.

Since retiring from that career, he has assumed the role of a traditional Indigenous firekeeper. 

That work now takes him around the world to promote the benefits of Indigenous land stewardship — in particular how to cleanse the landscape with cultural burning — in hopes of making it more widespread internationally. 

This month, his mission took him far south to Brazil, where he spoke at the United Nations climate summit, COP30.

At that major international event, he shared his extensive experience as a leader in a growing Indigenous-led fire movement. The summit saw fierce confrontations between security and Indigenous land defenders.

“I got into talking, presenting and just seeing the importance and the need for cultural burning as climate change happened,” he said in an interview before his departure.

“Seeing that the forest was too thick — that it needed to be looked after properly.”

He’s also been to Australia, Fiji, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Colombia and United Nations meetings in Rome to promote cultural burning and land stewardship.

In his travels, he’s met countless fellow Indigenous people who share and advocate for those same values — many of them with ancient cultural burning traditions of their own.

Gilchrist is widely recognized for his leadership in the movement in his homelands, serving as vice-chair of the Thunderbird Collective, an Indigenous organization pushing for more cultural fire practices. He’s also a member of the Salish Fire Keepers Society.

Through the Thunderbird Collective, he hopes to train and support Indigenous communities in fire stewardship and cultural burning.

Being a cultural firekeeper requires significant responsibility and time. But he realized advocacy work was also needed — something he’s taken upon himself, after recognizing how frequent and devastating wildfires have become in the era of climate change. 

“The loss to fires is getting pretty catastrophic,” he said. “It’s always sad to see the loss.”

“There is a better way of looking after the land, so that it’s not so dangerous to the public. … It is doable.”

‘Our ancestors used to do that all across North America’

Gilchrist began working with fire when he was just 15, to help support his family, after his carpenter stepdad got injured on the job.

He started his 30-year firefighting career with the BC Wildfire Service in 1982, working with the agency until 2012. He retired from fighting fires shortly after.

In 1991, he was a member of the Merritt Firedevils, a type one all-Indigenous emergency unit crew, which is a group of firefighters who are “usually the first to arrive at a fire site to suppress a wildfire,” the BC Wildfire Service states.

One year later, he became the crew’s leader, and travelled all over the country to fight fires, carrying on the prescribed burning traditions of his ancestors. 

In 1996, he moved to full-time work with the BC Wildfire Service, completing a 16-week government training program, Indigenous Fire Prevention.

That’s where he began to learn more about fire prevention and Indigenous use of fire to steward the land.

He also discovered the practice wasn’t just common in his own territories. 

“It’s amazing that our ancestors used to do that all across North America,” he said. “It goes all the way down to South America, Africa, Australia — the whole thing was all burning.”

‘You can’t do work on the forest just once’

Historically in his region, Gilchrist said Indigenous people conducted low-intensity controlled burns every spring and fall, to support different habitats and maintain varying landscapes — including to deter forest overgrowth.

The ancestral practice — also known as prescribed or cultural burns — helped “cleanse the land” by preventing trees from encroaching on one another. This kept forests healthy by decreasing fuel — such as low-hanging branches, small or dead trees and other vegetation — from accumulating as time passed.

“When you burn it lightly in the springtime, the fire consumes the fuels and turns it into nutrients for the plants,” Gilchrist explained.

But, he emphasized, that process was never a one-off. Treating forests with light burns needs to happen every seven to 15 years.

“You can’t do work on the forest just once,” he said. “It has to be continuous — it has to be more of a lifestyle change.”

During prescribed burns, trees are pruned by slashing low-hanging branches. This tactic thins forests and creates more space between trees. It also helps prevent fires from climbing to treetops and spreading to other trees.

Slashed branches are piled with the other gathered fuel and sometimes burned at a later date, which was typically sometime in the winter season.

“The longer that you don’t have fire on the ground, the [more] fuel builds up,” Gilchrist said. “But also the forest encroaches on itself — trees become denser and thicker.”

“Then they become diseased, because there’s only so much water for the trees and for the land.”

Different burn cycles achieved different landscapes, and helped prevent trees from taking over, he said.

“That’s how it was for thousands of years. And if you don’t do that, you get to where we’re at now, where it’s too thick.”

“It happens if you don’t look after the land — if you don’t steward the land with fire.”

Historically, much of the Nicola Valley was grassland, rather than the thick forests found in many areas there today, Gilchrist said.

Since ancient times, the local valley bottoms were host to massive cottonwood trees, growing alongside Indigenous pithouses and other traditional structures.

Firekeepers maintained those grasslands and meadows by burning the land every two years, he said. Controlled burns destroyed any tree seedlings, needles or pine cones, preventing them from spreading.

But thinning the woodlands also made hunting easier, too.

The practice helped local communities, too, improving hunting areas and encouraging different medicines to grow in the open grasslands left by burning.

“You have to burn every two years — perpetually — for thousands of years, and it’ll stay a healthy grassland,” he said. 

“But once you miss a few burn cycles, the trees become taller than the light burning can kill. Eventually, the trees start to take over.”

In the fall, at higher elevations, burning every four years allowed huckleberry patches to grow and prosper. These burns also nurtured other medicines, and habitat for both ungulates and wetland species.

Light burns along river banks helped deepen and strengthen the roots of some deciduous trees — such as cottonwood, willow and alder.

Encouraging those trees to flourish helped keep the water cool for fish, as it provided patches of shade over a waterway. It also protected river banks from erosion and flooding.

“There’s a lot of reasons and ways that the fire was used in a good way,” Gilchrist said.

A large Indigenous settlement once stood where the city of Merritt is today, at the junction of the Nicola and Coldwater rivers.

“The area around the community was burned just for protection and safety from fire in the summertime,” he recounted.

“Everything was known, especially by the matriarchs of the land. … The females kept the stories of when it was last burned, where the medicine was picked, where the berries were ready, when it needed to be burned again.”

Settler fire suppression gradually stamped out cultural burning

Settlers built their houses and towns out of wood, often in the middle of heavily forested, fire-prone areas.

“A lot of people want to live in the forest with the trees,” Gilchrist said. “They don’t want to see fire in the trees.”

This practice of low-intensity controlled burns slowly became less common by the end of the 20th century, as settlers’ worldviews about land stewardship and suppressing fire came to dominate.

“I think it was the fear of fire,” Gilchrist mused. “Seeing people lighting fires must’ve looked dangerous, I guess.”

“You make that illegal — so that people aren’t adding fire to the land — then you just start putting out fires that you see.”

Summertime wildfires, many sparked by lightning, began to threaten colonial settlements — and this is when Gilchrist believes today’s rapid-response fire-suppression model took root. It was a “hit fast, hit hard” approach to wildfires, he said.

In a semi-arid landscape, unless there are smaller, frequent burns to consume fuels that fall to the ground, that natural debris will pile up and dry out even more.

“They don’t deteriorate,” he said. “They just stay on the ground and wait for fire — it just keeps building up and building up.”

“It just becomes more and more of a danger, the longer that you don’t have a fire on the land. … Now we’re seeing huge megafires because of that kind of land stewardship.” 

Gilchrist sees cultural burning as a type of medicine for the ecosystem. Suppressing that medicine, in favour of reactionary firefighting efforts, has now resulted in the fuel-filled forests that we have today — as he sees it, thick and sick with disease and debris.

“Now, we’re seeing responses becoming ineffective, because the fires are just too intense,” he lamented. “With climate change, the only thing you can really change is the fuel.

“Over thousands of years, it was done. It’s a cleansing. It was made natural by Indigenous people.”

Today, combined with the effects of climate change, hotter, drier and even windier summer conditions have created “the recipe for megafires,” he said.

“The earth can only handle so [many] trees on it, because there’s just not enough rain, not enough moisture, to support the amount of trees that are here,” he said.

As the climate has changed, so has the typical fire season. At one time, Gilchrist recalled, that season would usually be over by early September.

“Now, we’re seeing it move into October, maybe even longer,” he said. “The burn seasons are even getting longer, too, with climate change.”

“That’s just adding more and more of a danger to society.”

Learning to apply fire ‘when we could, as often as possible’

During his decades-long career with BC Wildfire Service, Gilchrist helped conduct hundreds of prescribed burns “for all different reasons.” 

In that time, he and his crews applied fire across thousands of hectares around Merritt and the surrounding Nicola Valley, even going as far as Lytton and Hedley. 

That work often involved partnering with municipalities and First Nations. 

And, like how his own ancestors conducted that work, different burns were done in the spring and fall seasons.

“We did elk, deer and moose habitat burns, even mountain beaver,” he recalled. “​As we discovered person-caused fires, we would burn those, too.

“We applied fire just when we could, as often as possible.”

His crew favoured a “light hands on the land” approach to their prescribed burn work, avoiding when possible heavy fire-suppression machinery such as bulldozers.

Areas that required prescribed burns were determined by their proximity to a community — such as creating a 2.5-kilometre “buffer” around the city of Merritt, he said.

Previous prescribed burn work he and his crew did ultimately helped mitigate the Lily Lake wildfire outside of Merritt in 1999, which burned approximately 110 hectares.

“We burned it at nighttime to control it,” he recalled. “We did a lot of work around that area.”

Revisiting burns of the past

In July, Gilchrist brought IndigiNews to visit places he’d applied fire to decades ago, such as a forested area around Fox Farm Road. He estimates it’s been at least 20 years since the area was treated.

At the city’s north end, Gilchrist showed IndigiNews another area he once treated with fire, roughly 15 years ago.

He pointed out how signs of his work can still be seen today, for instance how well-spaced the trees are from each other, he noted, and how their lower branches had been pruned to reduce wildfire fuel. 

But in the years that passed, piles of needle droppings from the tree branches had since accumulated into a thick layer blanketing the ground.

“You can pick it up and hear it crunch,” he said. “It’s not powdery yet, but it’s still able to burn.”

Over the course of 20 years, he also did fire mitigation work on the property around his sister’s home in Nooaitch Indian Band, within Nlaka’pamux Nation. 

That work included cycles of spacing and removing damaged trees, slashing, piling and burning every two to five years.

The results of his work there, he said, offer proof of the importance of ancient fire practices amidst climate change.When the catastrophic Lytton fire jumped the Nicola River and swept through the area in 2021, his sister’s home remained unscathed, even though it was made of logs.But it also underscored how personal the climate crisis has become for many. Just months later, that fall’s catastrophic atmospheric river flooded the region, and washed away his sister’s log house, Gilchrist said.

Cultural burning could help mitigate a smoke-filled future

Nearly 50 years since his youthful days in Merritt, smoky summers — for weeks or even months — are no longer a rarity for communities in the province’s Interior.

Nowadays, such summers have simply become normal and expected, along with the air-quality warnings and extreme health concerns that come with them.

“Our kids are going through that,” Gilchrist lamented.

In syilx Okanagan homelands, for example, smoky summers have seemingly been normalized in recent years — with local media outlets even using terms like “Smoke-anagan” to describe the distressing climate-fuelled trend.

Since 2021, there have been more than 1,600 wildfires each year in B.C., according to the province. Two years ago, nearly 2,300 fires burned 2.8 million hectares — 300,000 more hectares than the record-breaking 2017 and 2018 wildfire seasons combined.

Niigaan Sinclair, an Indigenous scholar and commentator, told Canada’s National Observer that one in seven First Nations in Canada experienced being evacuated during this year’s wildfire season.

Gilchrist himself said that he’s been evacuated at least five times in the last five years.

He noticed that wildfire seasons were starting to worsen following the 1994 wildfire in snpink’tn (Penticton), also known as the Garnet fire, which saw 5,500 hectares burned. More than 3,500 people were evacuated and 18 homes and structures were lost.

Amid the climate crisis, Gilchrist said the devastation wrought by worsening wildfires could be likened to a form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“There’s kind of like a PTSD that people get when they see fire and things like that,” he said.

“When you wake up in the morning and the valley is filled with smoke — you wonder where the fire is at, whether it’s going to be a danger to yourself.”

Prescribed burns on the rise in B.C. — but more are still needed

Gilchrist said that prescribed burn work in the province is “slowly” going in the right direction, “but it needs to be multiplied hundreds of times.”

Last year, 3,400 hectares of land were treated with 48 cultural and prescribed burns — 23 of them in partnership with First Nations, according to the BC Wildfire Service.

That’s more than double the total number carried out the year before, and up more than a third from 2022. 

The planned burns are skyrocketing year-over-year. This year saw 135 planned, the provincial fire agency said.

But even with the increase in such projects, Gilchrist said even more are needed to keep the land healthy. He believes hundreds of thousands of hectares across the province need to once again be treated with prescribed fire.

“We’re not burning enough,” he said. “It’s just a mind-boggling amount of work that needs to be done. … We need to speed things up.”

But even as authorities increasingly support the ancient practice, he believes prescribed and cultural burns need even more buy-in from government, academia and media. 

During the Thunderbird Collective’s first formal gathering in snpink’tn (Penticton) in September, the group heard from numerous Indigenous communities about the colonial barriers they said still exist against cultural burning, including regulatory and permitting challenges.

So public education is increasingly essential, Gilchrist said.

“Start spending more on prevention, wildfire mitigation and Indigenous land stewardship,” he said. 

More planned fires on the landscape bring not just greater ecological health, he emphasized. They also offer financial savings.

“You’ll start spending less money on suppression. People know that there is a better way of managing the forest and the land.”

“My thing now is pushing for Indigenous land stewardship and the Indigenous use of fire on the land. We need to get things going.”

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As the morning sun beams down upon them, dozens of elementary students eagerly make their way from their bus to a large garden plot of soil by the banks of sq’awsitkʷ (the Okanagan River).

Waiting for the group from Outma Sqilx’w Cultural School are shrubs native to syilx homelands — snowberry, chokecherry, saskatoon berry and wild roses — and trees including willow.

The saplings, still in their infancy, are ready to be planted with the help of the children’s hands and enthusiasm. 

“We’re going to save the world! We’re going to save the world!” one student enthusiastically proclaims as they stride along.

And with the guidance of adults — who had brushed the saplings’ roots with mycorrhizal fungi or bone meal fertilizer to help support their growth — the students get to digging and planting. Just steps away, the river roars past. 

The vegetation will not only grow to provide shade and help keep the water cool for future salmon migrating through the passage site, but it’ll also create habitat for different animals, too — birds, rodents and bugs, to name a few.

Changed landscape, restored ecosystem

The community planting event was a two-day effort that began on Nov. 7. Participants planted roughly 500 native species into the land around the dam’s fish passage channel, which opened in August.

At this point the waterway diverts into two channels — the main vein going straight through the Okanagan Lake Dam in sn’pink’tn (Penticton), and a smaller flow bypassing the dam into kɬúsx̌nítkʷ (Okanagan Lake) through the fish passage.

The Okanagan Nation Alliance and several partners built the fish passage around the dam earlier this year to support returning salmon as they migrate to the upstream side of the dam, hoping to spawn in waterways connected to the lake.

“In 10 years, it’ll be an absolutely changed landscape,” said Lee McFadyen, an environmental advocate who helped organize the event.

“It will have a changed feel to it — it will become an ecosystem unto itself.”

For decades, salmon were blocked from moving upriver into the lake because of the dam and channelization — an engineering process to straighten a winding waterway. For thousands of years before settler colonialism, the fish swam freely into kɬúsx̌nítkʷ and its creeks.

McFadyen said this fall season’s salmon run saw the first sockeye in decades return to the lake. 

“The first time since the 1920s,” she said, proudly.

To build the fish passage channel, some trees had to be removed, disturbing soil in the area. McFadyen said part of Okanagan Nation Alliance’s philosophy is to plant native species when soil is disturbed by a project.

Planting event was a ‘collaborative effort’ with over 200 children and adults participating

The group from Outma Sqilx’w Cultural School were among the 115 other students across four schools in the region who took part in the planting event’s first day. 

Additionally, roughly 100 adults joined the planting, too, as well as community youth groups including Penticton Scouts and Venturers.

“What I really love about it is the collaborative effort — the coming together of communities. That is so important,” said McFadyen.

“If we all don’t work together, we’re not going to make it.”

She said it was wonderful to have syilx kids there, whose ancestral relationship with salmon “has been so much part of their history.”

Being out on the land and learning gives the children “a sense of place, a sense of time, a sense of pride and a sense of belonging,” she added.

“One of the things that they might take away — and I hope that they do — is a pride of place, and a reconnection with their past. But moving forward with it.”

She called the planting event “a historical moment” for everyone involved.

“It is righting a wrong,” she said. “It is food for the future for so many species and communities.”

Land-based learning is integral to syilx education, teacher says

nx̌əx̌sítatkʷ Shayla Allison, a culture and language teacher at Outma Sqilx’w Cultural School, accompanied three of her grade school classes to the planting event.

She said that the land-based learning activities that her classrooms engage in — from planting and harvesting, to visiting hunting camps — are “authentic to who we are as a people.”

“Before there were Western systems, schools and classrooms, our children have always learned … by being, connecting, learning and being intimate with the connections around you, like life and land,” Allison said.

“That’s how we survived and lived. We knew about the science of plants, ecosystems, habitat — everything. The ways that we learned came from those ways of connecting with people and places.”

Every week, she said, they go out on the land and learn.

“Just connecting with the land. Also making sure that we’re respectful to the land, and leaving it better than it was when we got here,” she said.

“The way I always try to look at it, is wanting these kids to not learn from a book. Or learn that science is from a Western construct, or done and taught in Western old school ways of sitting in a class.”

The beauty is seeing young people with learning or social challenges “thrive in that outdoor environment” and become “whole new kids.”

“They get out, they’re the ones that are digging in the land — they’re smiling and they’re helpful. You see a new person,” she said.

“You see the value of taking them out, and seeing them be less censored and scared or afraid of being wrong. There is no wrong.”

Whatever teachings they learn on the land are then brought back to the classroom, where they then “solidify what they learned and how they learned it,” Allison said.

“Everyday, they learn how — one, they’re sacred as being children — but also, they can do good things and be helpful, even with learning. Your energy, your prayers and your thoughts go into everything that you do,” she said.

“They learn, each time, about coming with good intentions and good feelings, being helpful.”

Coming in with good intentions enables them to be mindful of where they are and who they’re with, she said.

“We’re all here to learn. We may make mistakes, but we make sure to come with good intentions and heart,” she said.

“It teaches them to be more observant and seeing — seeing the natural world and the people.”

There’s no better place to educate children “than getting out and doing things” through experiential learning, she concluded — “finding a way to connect everything to what we’ve already always known — to be authentic in sqilx’w and Indigenous teachings wherever you can.”

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