Salish Archipelago: Environment and Society in the Islands Within and Adjacent to the Salish Sea

Review By Aquila Flower

March 18, 2025

The Salish Sea is a transboundary estuarine ecosystem spanning the US-Canadian international border. Water in the Salish Sea circulates among three primary basins: the Strait of Georgia, Strait of Juan Fuca, and Puget Sound. The land in its coastal watersheds is home to over nine million people, many of whom reside within the Seattle-Vancouver megalopolis. The Salish Sea is a biologically abundant region, with towering temperate rainforests on land and marine waters home to many ecologically important and culturally iconic species such as orcas and salmon. The Salish Sea and its watersheds are managed through a complex quilt of administrative jurisdictions including over 80 Indigenous governments, as well as the local, state/provincial, and federal governments of Canada and the US. Resource management, environmental restoration and conservation, and residents’ sense of place in a multi-national region such as this are complicated by the fact that scientific datasets and reports, spatial data and maps, and non-fiction books are often focused on one specific jurisdiction or sub-region, rather than on the region as a whole. This creates a fragmented understanding of the true interconnectedness of transboundary ecosystems, a fractured and incomplete sense of place for residents, and barriers to effective policy making decisions.

The Salish Sea is a fairly new geographic concept, having only been formally accepted by US and Canadian governments as a water body in 2009-2010. This means that outreach and education about the region is ongoing, and will be aided by the publication of comprehensive, transboundary sources of information on this unique region’s characteristics. Now we have an invaluable new addition to this collection of regional literature titled Salish Archipelago: Environment and Society in the Islands Within and Adjacent to the Salish Sea. This volume is compilation of chapters written by an impressive array of experts covering numerous fields of study and edited by Moshe Rapaport.

Salish Archipelago consists of 20 chapters organized into four sections: Environment, History, Society, and Environmental Management. The chapters each focus on a different topic, but throughout there is a thread of focus on human-environment interactions. In contrast to previous publications about the Salish Sea, which have generally focused on the marine waters and their coastal watersheds, this book makes a case for considering the islands within the Salish Sea, as well as all of Vancouver Island (not only its Salish Sea watersheds), as an archipelago with a distinct identity. The regional definition in the book is not entirely clearly defined, and would have benefited from a more detailed map, but the authors offer a compelling argument for their choice to use islands as the defining features of the region, rather than hydrologic connectivity among watersheds.

Salish Archipelago offers a valuable overview of important geographical and socio-ecological topics for the region. Educators who teach about the Salish Sea will find this compilation a very useful resource. Although it covers a wide range of topics, Salish Archipelago does not claim to be a comprehensive regional geography text, and it is not totally clear how the subjects of the chapters were chosen. Missing from the book are several topics of interest to local residents, such as current agricultural and forest management practices, or the environmental effects and policy implications of international shipping routes in the Salish Sea. The geographic focus of the book is skewed toward the Canadian islands, and Vancouver Island in particular. The majority of contributors to the volume reside in Canada, and this is reflected in the scope of some chapters. In particular, hearing more about Indigenous perspectives on the US side of the border would have been a valuable addition. These are limitations that readers should be aware of, but they in no way diminish the value of the chapters that are included in the book. As the body of literature about the history and geography of the Salish Sea region expands, additional publications will help to address some of these gaps. Overall, Salish Archipelago is a wonderful addition to the growing body of publications focused on the Salish Sea region.