Restoring Salish sea gardens
Parks Canada's report on conservation from 2018 to 2023
- Conservation priority
- Indigenous leadership in conservation
- Location
- Gulf Islands National Park Reserve, British Columbia
Hul’q’umi’num’ and WSÁNEĆ First Nations and Parks Canada are collaborating to revive traditional sea gardens.
Through restoring the ecological and cultural significance of the sea gardens, the project is demonstrating the essential connection between humans and nature. Sea gardens thrive as an eco-cultural system with stewardship, which Indigenous Peoples have provided for thousands of years.
Project highlights
- Over 320 m of sea garden walls rebuilt
- More than 11,700 m2 of beach habitat maintained
- Over 11,000 volunteer hours invested
Guided by generations of Indigenous knowledge, rocks, tools, and many hands come together, as Parks Canada and community volunteers collaborate to revitalize the Fulford Harbour sea garden in Gulf Islands National Park Reserve. Photo: Parks Canada
Sea gardens
Built to cultivate intertidal marine ecosystems, sea gardens are just what they sound like: gardens in the sea. A common type found in Gulf Islands National Park Reserve is created by building a short rock wall at the low tide line where the water meets a beach. The wall acts to trap sediment that washes in during high tide. This extra sediment acts as a garden, creating a productive habitat for clams and other seafoods. Sea gardens are an Indigenous technology developed by listening to the sea.
Context
In Coast Salish territories in British Columbia, sea gardens thrived for well over 4000 years as highly productive eco-cultural systems, supporting a dense assortment of culturally significant food species such as Butter Clam, Littleneck Clam, cockles, chitons, octopi, seaweeds, sea cucumbers and crabs.
However, the onset of colonisation resulted in the suppression of this Indigenous stewardship practice, leading to the decline of the sea gardens. This decline was compounded by additional impacts from coastal development and industry which are modifying the ocean chemistry resulting in more acidic sea water and increasing biotoxin blooms. Increasingly, the sea gardens are also seeing threats from the impacts of climate change, including coastal erosion, changing ocean levels, new invasive species, and rising temperatures of both the water and air.
Working together
The restoration of the Salish sea gardens at Gulf Islands National Park Reserve is founded on collaboration. Bridging of different perspectives and the re-establishment of the connections between people, languages, and cultures has been essential. The project has led to the formation of two Indigenous knowledge working groups that are guiding the restoration efforts. Eleven First Nations, university researchers, other federal departments and non-governmental organisations have all contributed.
Outcomes
Together, the collaborators are reinstating sustainable practices that had been used for thousands of years, with a mix of modern ones. The project initiated the restoration of sea garden ecosystems that are habitat for culturally important species. Results in 2023 indicated an increase in juvenile native clam species, pointing towards promising outcomes for the sea gardens.
This work is reconnecting people with nature and is providing insights into ecosystem responses, and the management of linked human-natural systems. It has emphasised the reciprocal relationship between land, sea, and culture.
“To be in the place where they used to walk and where they used to feast. When the tide’s out the table’s set… to be there was an inherent privilege and I felt obligated to participate, make sure it was done right.”—Nicole Norris, Halalt Community Member
Video
Watch the sea garden restoration work at Gulf Islands National Park Reserve
Transcript
In Gulf Islands National Park Reserve people are keeping tradition alive.
For thousands of years Coast Salish people have tended clam gardens.
Used as a way of cultivating food, these gardens can be highly productive.
Rock walls are built near the lowest tide marks, to block sand and sediment
creating a platform on which shellfish thrive and
yielding up to four times the number of clams as unmodified beaches.
Hul’q’umi’num’ and W̱SÁNEĆ Nations partnered with Parks Canada
to restore two gardens in Gulf Islands National Park Reserve.
Volunteers are rebuilding ancient rock walls,
aerating the beach,
and removing kelp and sea lettuce to create ideal habitat for clams.
Work on the clam gardens takes place when the tide is at its lowest.
In the winter, this happens in the middle of the night.
Restoring clam gardens is important work.
It provides food for the community
and connects people to cultural knowledge
while also preserving intertidal ecosystems.
Learn more
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