XVI International Botanical Congess

First Peoples of British Columbia have maintained their plant resources ( including perennial species used as foods, materials, and medicines) for thousands of years through a strategy best described as keeping it living". Traditional conservation practices have been generally overlooked in the academic and political world, but are nonetheless real. They include: careful, selective harvesting, habitat enhancement through use of fire and other means, replanting of propagules, and weeding, pruning, transplanting and other cultivation techniques. Proprietorship and stewardship of key resource areas by individuals and lineages is also a conservation strategy, since it allows close monitoring and harvesting controls. Since traditional systems of plant management have been disrupted through acculturation, environmental deterioration and loss of knowledge of caring for plants, elders have observed significant declines in productivity and frequency of many species.