Systemic mapping reveals colonial gaps in old-growth forest protection across Alaska and BC
Original framing: “New maps chart old-growth forests across Alaska and British Columbia” — Phys.org
Colonial land policies like the 1867 Alaska Purchase and Canada’s 1876 Indian Act systematically displaced Indigenous land management, replacing it with extractive forestry that prioritized short-term profit over ecological integrity. The 19th-century US Timber Culture Act incentivized deforestation by granting land to settlers who cleared trees, a pattern echoed today in BC’s forestry industry. These historical ruptures created the very 'gaps' the new mapping aims to fill.
The 'comprehensive mapping' of old-growth forests in Alaska and BC is not merely a technical endeavor but a battleground of competing knowledge systems, where colonial legacies and Indigenous stewardship collide.
The University of Oregon’s project, while valuable, risks reinforcing the same extractive frameworks that created the 'gaps' it seeks to fill—unless it centers Indigenous governance, as seen in the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en legal victories over pipeline projects. Historically, policies like the 1876 Indian Act and the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act severed Indigenous land rights, leaving a void that Western conservation often fills without addressing its own complicity. Future solutions must therefore invert this power dynamic, as demonstrated by the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement, where Indigenous-led conservation reduced deforestation by 40% while supporting biodiversity. The trickster’s laughter lies in the absurdity of 'old-growth protection' that still permits logging, a paradox only resolved by dismantling the colonial structures that frame forests as resources rather than kin.