Photo above: Great Bear Rainforest, 2007.
by Doug Milek
Telling stories about important experiences is hard to get right. I have spent decades thinking about this. Not only because Round River’s story is a great one, filled with science, adventure, friendship, and magic, but also because it is next to impossible to clearly communicate what alchemy moves our hearts into action, or causes our hardened perceptions to soften and change.
Ferrying across Kuthai Lake on the northwest edge of British Columbia, my friend John Ward and I shared a conversation about the challenges of capturing the nuance of impactful stories and relationships. John is a Round River Board member and Taku River Tlingit First Nation Elder. We met 24 years ago when I came to the Taku, and as the timespan of a generation has passed, we have what I value as a rich shared history.
We talk about the massive endeavor to gather data on grizzly bears, moose, woodland caribou, and salmon throughout the Taku River watershed, which includes the body of water we cross. Data that, when paired with Local Ecological Knowledge, became a powerful tool to inform the Taku River Tlingit community’s vision toward a land use planning process with the provincial government. Over two decades of effort and contributions from student research teams also supported these initiatives, ultimately leading to the protection of over 7 million acres within the Taku River Tlingit’s traditional territory. In many ways, this work has become the blueprint for how Round River achieves conservation: integrating ecological and cultural values into decision-making tools that guide the establishment and management of protected areas, while providing on-the-ground research to address pressing conservation questions.
And this is the heart of the challenge: how to capture the essence of these relationships, these shared efforts, and the long-term commitment it has taken to achieve such conservation milestones. It’s hard to put into words the transformation that comes from combining ecological research with cultural knowledge, or the long arc of dedication required to turn this vision into protected land.
Yet, in moments like this, we come close to expressing Round River’s truest impact—work that goes beyond data or land and enters the lives of people and place. Through this revisiting of the larger relationship between Round River and the Tlingit, John and I talked about both the importance of people being on the land and the challenges for some to do so. He offered that through the work we have done, Round River holds an important role in helping to revive a purpose for his people to get back on their land.
Again, telling stories about important experiences is hard. The time after a flood when salmon swam through the wall tent beneath our cots and the bobbing cans of corn. The pack of African wild dogs chasing impala through camp in Botswana. The countless flat tires and broken-down trucks on deserted roads all over this earth.
Transformations of students, staff, and partners from such experiences as they seek the clarity that can come from wild places is at first personal. But ultimately, it’s a collective transformation, one that is greater than any individual story. One that comes from stumbling through introductions in a second language, from sharing a meal over a campfire, from adversity, from watching a people’s land ethic morph into a mapped vision, then into a conservation design, and then into established protected areas that will continue to be stewarded by their descendants after they pass. This greater story comes from an exchange between people whose lived experiences could not be more different on paper but who are inextricably linked by a commitment to place and a love of the natural world.
We are defining our purpose for getting out on the land.
Doug Milek, Round River’s Executive Director, has been a part of the Round River team since 2000. He previously held the role of Director of Student Programs from 2003 to 2023.
