First Nations Values in Protected Area Governance: Tla-o-qui-aht Tribal Parks and Pacific Rim National Park Reserve Grant Murray & Leslie King Published online: 22 May 2012 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012 Abstract Over the past few decades there has been increas- ing attention paid to ‘shared’ forms of governance and to the creation of new protected areas (PAs) that are designed to address ‘non-biological’ goals and values. The rationale for these initiatives has, in part, been based on the belief that well-designed systems of protected area governance will help to deliver desired outcomes and meet linked sociocul- tural, economic and environmental objectives. Addressing these questions has become increasingly important in Brit- ish Columbia, where a number of First Nations are asserting increasing control over existing state-run protected areas, as well as establishing new protected areas and designing governance systems for them that deliver outcomes conso- nant with cultural beliefs, values and goals. This paper reports on an in-depth case study of the Tla-o-qui-aht Tribal Parks and the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, with a focus on comparing how these physically adjacent protected areas with different objectives each attempt to meaningfully engage the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation in PA governance. Keywords Community conserved areas . First Nations . Governance . Values . British Columbia Introduction The creation and management of protected areas (PAs) continue to be the cornerstone of strategies to conserve biodiversity worldwide and the number of protected areas has increased dramatically over the last several decades. Concurrently, there have also been significant changes in the global discourse on PAs, as well as in the particular form this discourse has taken in Canada and British Co- lumbia. The 1980s and 1990s, for example, saw the de- velopment of a ‘new approach’ (as it is sometimes referred to), involving a shift in the conversation towards notions and phrases such as plurality, increased community par- ticipation, decentralization, and a broadening of the per- ceived objectives for PAs. This shift was based on a growing realization that top-down (state-administered), exclusionary PAs focused on the conservation of biodiver- sity were not consistently working and did not always fit well in the increasingly complex playing fields of global conservation. The rationale for these new approaches has been based in part on the belief that well-designed and ‘participatory’ systems of PA governance will help to deliver socially just outcomes and more effectively meet linked sociocultural, economic and environmental objec- tives (Wells and Brandon 1992; see also West and Brechin 1991; Western and Wright 1994; Büscher and Whande 2007). This new approach can be analytically separated into at least two components: 1) the desired outcomes from PAs; and 2) PA governance. The first component in this new approach considered the desired outcomes from PAs and, in brief, suggested that if PAs could be of more direct benefit to local communities they would be more likely to succeed. These changes were captured in a reclassification of the G. Murray (*) : L. King Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, BC, Canada e-mail: grant.murray@viu.ca Present Address: L. King Royal Roads University, Victoria, Canada Hum Ecol (2012) 40:385–395 DOI 10.1007/s10745-012-9495-2