The B.C. Integrated Land Management Bureau initiated a study to assess the potential cumulative effects of different industrial activities on areas traditionally used by the Tahltan First Nation. The goal of this project was to determine the effects of development activities on the ecological and socio-cultural values of the Tahltan to assist in developing sound, sustainable land-use policies.

Services: Cortex facilitated roundtable meetings with community leaders, elders, resource professionals, and stakeholders to inform development of an analytical approach for assessing the cumulative effects of landbase industrial activity on ecological and socio-cultural values. We employed focused discussions on types of values important to participants and “mind-mapping” to record and organize how the landbase was used by each member of the roundtable relative to identified values. These annotated mind maps served as immediate feedback to the participants on how the effects from economic activity could be related to social, cultural, and ecological values, and the key indicators needed to understand the impacts of different management decisions. The outputs of these facilitated sessions were used by analysts and domain experts to design and build the models and scenarios needed to assess potential impacts of industrial activities on identified values.

Outcomes: Throughout the cumulative effects analysis, our consultative process was used to revisit the original set of values and the resulting model outputs, enabling the community as a whole to engage with the analysis and ask important questions forming the basis of further analysis scenarios. Furthermore, the members of the roundtable were able to incorporate project findings into their own resource planning processes.