The Six Nations Wildlife and Stewardship Office (SN Wildlife) is currently seeking community input to help on a Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) study on aerial insectivores (primarily birds and bats) to study the animals nesting and making Six Nations their homes.

SN Wildlife has partnered with Nature Canada on the project and received funding from Environment Climate Change Canada. SN Wildlife is now looking for community input on these animals: where they can be found in the area and what they mean culturally to the Six Nations community.

Lauren Jones, Wildlife Manager for SN Wildlife, highlighted the importance of gathering the information for this project to see how these animals are using the local habitat on Six Nations.

“The species in particular, though, they are all decreasing in numbers across North America. Many of them are considered to be special, concerned or threatened or endangered, and so I think it’s very important to see what the status of them are on the reserve and how they’re using this habitat because for many species and for many areas across Ontario. They don’t have the habitat that Six Nations does. So we’re kind of a refuge for these species in a lot of ways.”

Jones spoke on the role that these animals play in the current ecosystem but also said culturally they are significant as well.

“Obviously, any species in the ecosystem has an important part in that food chain and in the environment in general, they’re also included in the creation story, for example. I read some old stories given to me by Six Nations Polytechnic that specifically mention bats, for example,” she said.

“I think that just inherently they’re very important but, obviously, scientifically they’re very important as well because if they’re gone what’s going to be eating all those mosquitoes that bother us so much,” she added.

Jones said that the Six Nations biological inventory will also be boosted by this project. The inventory has not been updated since 1985 and Jones hopes that this project will help to enhance that and update how these species have changed in that time.

She also spoke of her hopes to engage community members and gather input from those in the community who have scientific and cultural knowledge of these species.

“Physically, where the birds are and how they’re using their habitat is very important information, but also what these birds mean to community members themselves. I think that’s really important information to pass on to future generations and I think that it’s really important that Six Nations is represented in that way,” she said.

“There’s a lot of instances in Canadian history that in which Indigenous viewpoints have not been represented in any way, and then so this is an opportunity to do that in this project.”

The hope is to create a “stewardship” through the project.

“The hope is once we have all that data, when we have the historical data, when we’ve done the TEK interviews, when we’ve done the surveys and we’ve actually said these species are using this area, or this species is really declining and could use our help, then, ideally, we want to come up with some sort of stewardship,” she said. “That could mean planting a habitat, building nest boxes, just generally making policy changes.”

Interested volunteers can contact Jones at 519-445-0330 Ext. 4438 or email her at laurenjones@sixnations.ca. Volunteers will be able to complete a workbook-style interview to go through the specific species to see what kind of knowledge that community members can bring to the project.

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