The Environmental Services branch includes two major projects:

• Indigenous Protected Conserved Area (IPCA)
• Cumulative Effects Management

Indigenous Protected Conserved Area (IPCA) includes:
Sweetgrass – In the Wild and Garden: This program developed successful methods for cultivating sweetgrass in gardens, established motherbeds in all eight Member Communities, schools and hospitals; focused on stewardship, habitat assessments and restoring sweetgrass stands.

White Ash – Forest to Basket: This project included hands-on training on harvesting and basket making, supporting knowledge transfer, and promoting stewardship of white ash as an alternative to endangered black ash.

Native Species, Plant Inventories and Habitat Assessments – These projects evaluate cumulative effects of 400 years of human activity on ecosystems, integrating historical, cultural and ecological perspectives for holistic assessments. The project also informs restoration planning, carbon capture strategies and long-term monitoring, which strengthens IPCA management through detailed ecological baselines and adaptive planning.

Cumulative Effects Management at a glance:

Cumulative Effects Management is the change in the environment that is caused by multiple interactions among human activities and natural processes that accumulate across space and time. The benefits of looking at these impacts cumulatively are that they provide a more realistic view of what is occurring in the environment and the interactions that take place. Looking at the system as a whole, one can identify potential compounding effects from activities.