Grantee Profiles
< profile listRound River Conservation Studies: The Science of a Thousand Cups of Coffee
Web site: http://www.roundriver.org/
"Everything starts small," Dennis Sizemore says. It may start with an individual connection over coffee. But if you have the patience to practice what Sizemore calls "the science of a thousand cups of coffee," the results can be huge.
"With the Taku River Tlingit," says Sizemore, executive director of Round River Conservation Studies, "we started with one family who was concerned that a mining company wanted to build a road across an old historical trail, and the Taku River Tlingit First Nation eventually took out a lawsuit to stop the road." Round River and the Taku River Tlingit First Nation developed a conservation areas design (CAD) for 10 million acres of largely undisturbed aboriginal lands. It identifies core areas and ecological corridors, and prioritizes those that must be preserved to protect biodiversity.
"The CAD is the biological layer and combines conservation biology with traditional technical knowledge," Sizemore says. "The next step is the land planning process, which is the social layer." After the land plan comes the third layer, an economic development plan.
The CAD is being used as part of a Canadian Supreme Court case challenging the permitting of the Tulsequah Chief mining and haul road.
Sizemore, who started his conservation career studying grizzlies, founded Round River in 1990 along with Bruce Baizel, an environmental attorney, and Doug Peacock, an activist and author. All three were frustrated. "We wanted to find something that worked," says Sizemore.
They settled on a research and education organization that would develop conservation strategies for large, flourishing and intact wild places. They were particularly interested in areas threatened by development where there was a chance to involve local communities.
Round River also decided to blend conservation biology research with the "traditional ecological knowledge" -- or TEK -- of local residents. For the Taku River Tlingit, TEK might include what hunters have to say about where the caribou were 20 years ago, where they are now and the current population size.
"To get community buy-in and lasting conservation, you need to include local people," Sizemore says. That means getting to know the community -- who are the matriarchs and who are the quiet people to whom the others listen? "You have to spend some time getting in there and proving to people you're willing to spend a lot of time walking the land."
Profiled 2001