50 Places, 50 Stories
Celebrating 50 stories of conservation across BC
As Sierra Club BC marks fifty years of conservation work, we raise our hands to the longtime Indigenous stewards of fifty special places in BC. In many cases, Sierra Club BC and our partners have also played a role in helping protect these places. In some cases, it’s clear there is still much work to be done to truly protect their ecological and cultural values in a way that respects Indigenous rights and jurisdiction.
For millennia, Indigenous peoples have stewarded the lands and waters many of us now call home. From clam gardens to Garry oak meadows to subalpine berry patches, their efforts have shaped the natural environment to provide for the needs of humans and other beings.
Through Indigenous Guardian programs and sharing of deep and specialized knowledge between generations, Indigenous peoples continue to lead the way in conservation.
We invite you to celebrate these stories with us and find out how you can help create more lasting solutions for conservation now and into the future.
Follow Sierra Club BC on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and share your own stories of these places with the hashtag #50Places.
Click below to explore conservation stories from five regions of BC.
Read stories of conservation across BC
Planning a visit?
We encourage you to get outside and connect with nature in some of these places.
Indigenous Nations have their own unique protocols and expectations of visitors to their territories. In some places, respectful visitors may be welcome and encouraged to enjoy the tourism opportunities offered by many Nations. Visitors may also be asked not to enter certain areas that are culturally or ecologically sensitive.
When planning a visit to a place, we encourage you to find out whose territory it is, and what being a respectful and responsible visitor looks like in their territory.
Contributors
This project was produced by Kat Zimmer and Mya Van Woudenberg of Sierra Club BC. Special thanks for extensive research and volunteer contributions to Patricia Lane, Alisa Koebel, Darcy Lindberg, Valine Brown, Jen Argan, Kari Gunton, and Diane Pinch, author of Passion and Persistence, a book about Sierra Club BC’s history released in the fall of 2019. Read Balancing the Canoe, Sierra Club BC’s statement of accountability, to learn more about our journey of acknowledging our history and the steps we are taking to change course for our future.
