Rewilding UBC
Eco-futurism in the review mirror (and why it's the wrong concept)
Rewilding is becoming a thing in new projects being planned for UBC’s institutional core. It’s not something that yet seems to have found itself into the commercial residential developments of the UNA zone (instead we have de’wilding’ as trees are removed and raptor nests coned). I would suggest we keep our eyes open for it in the Stadium Place development plans.
Rewilding “can be thought of as repairing the Earth from the ravages imposed by humans over the last thousands of years. It appeals to our general belief that things were better in the ‘good old days’ with respect to conservation, and that all we have seen are losses of iconic species and the introduction of pests to new locations” (Krebbs 2022). This working definition is useful to keep in mind. Krebb’s opinion piece is focussed on conservation considerations ecologists should take into account when implementing a rewilding project. I’m more interested in the assumptions embedded in the concept.
Rewilding assumes the past was a kind of utopian state of ecological harmony. It further assumes a past absent of humans, or at least very little significant human intervention in the environment. There is something conceptually static and timeless in this kind of imaginary.
Rewilding UBC’s Campus ‘Gateway.’
The new Gateway BuIlding is to be located at the intersection of University Blvd and Wesbrook Mall. The primary occupants will be the Schools of Kinesiology and Nursing. A primary feature of the building will be its use of ‘natural’ materials and a rewilding of the surrounding spaces. Using ‘natural’ materials is thought to replicate Indigenous values in that our societies were pre-industrial and thus had no manufacturing.
In the Gateway Building documents rewilding and Musqueam values are often framed in parallel: “The themes of rewilding, wellness and movement offer a fluidity reminiscent of natural processes and the art style of the Musqueam. The site’s organization will be through pedestrian movement and desire lines” [emphasis added. Gateway Project Booklet, p. 36]. Rewilding, we are told we give a “sense that the landscape existed before the built realm” GPB, p. 37). “The Gateway Building will embrace a new approach to landscape and public realm that in keeping with Indigenous values and practices, [will] support a diversity of plant and wildlife species” (GPB, p. 38). “The landscape design emphasizes a more naturalized approach than what is typically seen in this plan area with indigenous plantings that reflect a traditional Musqueam approach to wellness and open space” (GPB, p. 40).
An Indigenous presence is represented by naturalized materials, being placed conceptually as before ‘built realm,’ and filled with indigenous flora. Without likely intending to do this the designers have reverted to a classic colonial trope that locates Indigenous peoples in an unchanging timeless past that predates modernity.
Because this is a project that is approved by the UBC Board of Governors, I searched through the information that they had in front of them as they made their decision to approve this building and its plan. While the term ‘rewilding’ does not show up, the underlying conceptual framing is consistent with the colonial framing embedded in rewilding.
Some designers are using the terms nature-based, renaturalize or naturalize in place of rewilding, but the underlying concept of returning to a pre-human disrupted environment is maintained.
Humans are Part of the Environment
In my university day job I research coastal ecological knowledge of Indigenous and settler harvesters. My Indigenous-based research involves social-ecological interviews of knowledge holders and archaeological testing for ecological practices along the north coast of BC over the past ten millennia. Why does this relate to rewilding? Well, becuase along this coast there never was a space that could really be called ‘wild’ until after European diseases decimated Indigenous communities and societies beginning in the late 1700s.
As documented by Richard Boyd for the North West Coast and Cole Harris for the Fraser estuary and valley, small pox and other European introduced pandemics killed anywhere from 40 to 80% of the coastal and interior Indigenous population before BC joined confederation in 1871. The ‘wild’ that persists in the colonial imagination is one that emerged in the wake of waves of death. The ‘wild’ is the result of the withdrawal of Indigenous land and water based practices that for millennia had shaped the land, augmented productivity of all manner of species, shifted ‘natural’ ranges of others, and even removed some species from specific places.
My own work has explored coastal salmon watersheds and abalone productivity and harvesting before the period of pandemics. With salmon it became clear from archaeological and oral interviews that salmon productivity was managed by extensive environmental disruption and intervention over millennia. We found that abalone, often thought to have been out of reach for Indigenous harvesters until after the extirpation of sea otters, was a constant source of food for at least 2500 years before the start of the maritime fur trade on the north coast. Our observations were buttressed by archaeological research that revealed sea otters were deliberately managed by Indigenous hunters pre-pandemics. Other researchers have demonstrated that intertidal clam gardens created new beaches that increased clam productivity beyond ‘natural’ levels. Then there are a string of studies about the management of berry patches. Another line of research documents orcharding of crab apples and hazelnuts. And then there are the camas fields on Vancouver Island or the use of burning in the interior of the province. The point of it is that there is precious little of BC that was not in some way disturbed and altered by Indigenous stewardship. For all intents and purposes there has never been a ‘wild’ BC.
UBC’s endorsement and promotion of rewilding a key focal point of campus ends up repudiating work toward decolonization. There are ways to respect the local and provincial Indigenous cultures and values that don’t involve imagining us as figments of a utopian naturalized past. Our villages persisted for many millennia on foundations designed, engineered, and built in ways that transformed the world around us. We altered creeks, managed parklands, used our knowledge of the environment to work with it to increase its productive capacity. Rewilding erases Indigenous people as active agents in the historical flow.