Traditional land use quantified
Jorge Barrera
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (May 28/01) - Deh Cho First Nation is pushing digital mapping technology used in land claims to a new level in their land selection and protection strategy.
Peter Cizek, environmental consultant with the first nation, has designed a computer program that gives a numerical value to traditional land use.
"With this you can compare traditional values with industrial values of land," said Cizek.
Developed from Arcview, a store-bought mapping program, the Deh Cho system can rate hunting areas from intense use to locations where just one animal was killed.
"Before you just used lines and blobs of land," said Cizek.
The program grids Deh Cho land into 10 km squares. Each square is given ratings based on traditional value, ecological importance and development potential.
Ratings are weighted to favour traditional use and ecological importance over development.
"This program allows us to identify areas of conflict for protection," said Cizek.
Cizek said the program provides a level of precision not seen before in mapping out traditional land use.
"We can use it in court should any conflicts arise with other parties," said Cizek.
"Before people were just drawing trails, which can be chewed up in court." said Cizek.
"With this we can pin-point a portion of land and say so and so killed whatever here, and in a 10 km rating of this 100 caribou have been hunted," he said.
The data gathered for ratings comes from thousands of interviews with members of the 10 Deh Cho communities.
Cizek said common sense was used in the selection and protection of lands in other land-claims. What makes this program different is the systematic analysis applied to traditional use of land, said Cizek.
Currently the model Cizek is working on factors five layers of data, traditional use, ecological importance, logging potential, oil and gas, and mining.
Herb Norwegian, assistant negotiator with the band, conducted some of the interviews which yielded the numbers for mapping. He said the high-tech mapping is the foundation for the Deh Cho's land management strategy.
"We can put a plan in place for every square inch of the land," he said.
"This is a big ticket item, it takes us to the next step," he said.
Cizek said traditional land mapping has been around in the North since the late 70's during the Dene-Metis mapping project at the University of Alberta.
The first transition from hard-copy maps into computers began in the 80's, but Cizek said getting the maps on computer was a difficult process.
"It was partially successful, but it was never taken to the next level," he said.:
