Our Programs
The Hakai Institute commenced operations in the autumn of 2009, so has now been in operation for roughly two years. What we have here is a skeleton only; over the next few months we will be fleshing it out with details for the 2012 season and beyond.
Hakai Network for Coastal People, Ecosystems and Management
The Hakai Institute via its parent organization the Tula Foundation has recently concluded an agreement with Simon Fraser University to launch the Hakai Network for Coastal People, Ecosystems and Management. This program will subsume all of the science and conservation work Tula and Hakai have pursued on the Central Coast over the last few years, and lead to greatly expanded activity in the same vein, plus strengthen our capacity to work in collaboration with First Nations, in particular our immediate neighbors, the Heiltsuk and Wuikinuxv.
Environmental Law
The Tula Foundation has for several years been a funder of the Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria. We are currently discussing how that relationship can be strengthened and expanded via the Hakai Institute to include an increased focus on issues that are important to the Central Coast such as contaminated sites.
University Courses
We were thrilled to be able to host a University of Victoria course this past summer entitled ES470 Coastal Biodiversity and Restoration. You can see a video field guide to Calvert Island that the instructors and students put together as part of the course. We hope that Coastal Biodiversity will be offered annually and that it will be joined by other courses in 2012.
Partnership with QQS/Koeye
One of the high points of the 2010 summer season was the realization of a partnership with the Qqs Project Society, a Heiltsuk First Nation nonprofit organization supporting youth, culture and environment. Qqs operates the Koeye Camp, an innovative youth science and cultural camp program that takes place every summer in the Koeye River Valley, which is just across Fitz Hugh Sound about 26 km from Hakai. In fact the Koeye residents are our closest neighbors. It has now become a tradition for the campers to paddle a traditional style canoe across to Hakai for an overnight stay as the culmination of the program.
Central Coast Community
Hakai is the natural and traditional gathering place for people on the Central Coast, and in 2010 & 2011 we endeavored to re-establish that tradition. We hosted many diverse activities, including:
- The annual meeting of the Coastal Guardian Watchmen Network
- Treaty negotiations between the Wuininuxv First Nation at the Federal and Provincial governments
- School visits from Bella Bella and Bella Coola (including a week long camp)
- A course for elders and others on the Heiltsuk language
- A week long in residence program for painters
- An week long archaeological assessment including members of the Heiltsuk and Wuikinuxv First Nations
- A multi-day visit by BC Parks personnel, Wuikinuxv First Nation members and many other volunteers who helped improve trails and build bridges
- We welcomed many, many recreational boaters, commercial operators and Central Coast residents back to Hakai for education and recreation on the beaches and trails
- Plus many other activities that we may have forgotten at the time of writing but will add later
Sustainable Systems
At Hakai we live completely off the grid. We produce our own electricity, treat our own water, and manage our own waste. We operate year round and may have as many as one hundred people on site at any given time. We are therefore by Central Coast standards a significant settlement. We treat infrastructure not as an obligation but as an opportunity for innovation so we are happy to work with other communities and outside experts to find solutions to sustainable living in our situation. In 2010 we launched a series of projects to establish an effective communications network, totally revamp our electrical grid, inaugurate a site-wide insulation and energy conservation program, install a centralized circulating water/glycol heating system, a large solar power array, a wind turbine for evaluation, a water treatment system, and a full sewage treatment plant among other things.
Local Food Production
Despite all our determination to do so, we failed to erect our greenhouses this year, and so apart from herbs and the salal berries and other foods we could gather, and of course the fish and Dungeness crabs we could harvest from the ocean, we made no headway in our mission to produce food locally. We hope that will change in 2012. We also will encourage enterprising producers on the Central Coast to step forward and supply us with local produce.
Hakai Coastal Observatory
In 2012 we will make headway toward our vision of a Hakai Coastal Obsevatory, which will conduct long term ecological monitoring in the spirit of Long Term Ecological Research Network (LTER) and other coastal observatories worldwide albeit on a smaller scale than some. We made the first baby steps toward that goal in 2010 & 2011 by installing a simple weather station, which reports environmental data and imagery to a public internet site.