{"id":16903,"date":"2016-03-29T00:11:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-29T07:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-hakamagwp.pantheonsite.io\/news\/indigenous-cooperation-model-walrus-conservation"},"modified":"2019-03-20T12:56:53","modified_gmt":"2019-03-20T19:56:53","slug":"indigenous-cooperation-model-walrus-conservation","status":"publish","type":"custom_news","link":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/news\/indigenous-cooperation-model-walrus-conservation\/","title":{"rendered":"Indigenous Cooperation a Model for Walrus Conservation"},"content":{"rendered":"

At a summit on Arctic science and policy at the University of Alaska\u00a0Fairbanks, Russian walrus hunters nod along as George Noongwook speaks of the changes he\u2019s seen around his community of Savoonga, a town on Saint Lawrence Island, just 65 kilometers from Russia\u2019s eastern coast.<\/p>\n

A translator delivers the Yup\u2019ik walrus hunter\u2019s message to his Russian counterparts, who are familiar with the refrain.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing lots of walruses, we just can\u2019t get to them,\u201d says Noongwook. \u201cIn the past two or three years, we haven\u2019t been able to harvest any walrus or bowhead [whales] because of the ice conditions. Pretty much, we have to go farther out, and that can get really dangerous in small open skiffs. If you go [300 kilometers], you\u2019re going to be in trouble. The weather can pick up really fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tensions between Russia and the United States may be riding high (fueled by conflicts in Crimea and Syria, and other factors), but in the sparsely populated North Pacific, indigenous communities are working together to tackle shared ecological challenges. Thousands of kilometers from Moscow and Washington, it\u2019s people like Noongwook who, gathered together for the weeklong Arctic Science Summit, are redefining Russia-US relations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always good to hear what they say over there and what we see on our side, and compare the two because we\u2019re talking about the same ecosystem,\u201d Noongwook says. \u201cIt\u2019s always good to bring people together, especially hunters.\u201d<\/p>\n

The indigenous populations of Alaska and Russia\u2019s Far East share cultural, family, and kinship\u00a0ties across a modern maritime border. As the Iron Curtain descended in Europe during the Cold War, the so-called Ice Curtain also divided indigenous Yup\u2019ik, I\u00f1upiaq, and Unangax\u00a0communities. For decades, families remained split, and cultural ties faded until the late 1980s, when formal contact resumed.<\/p>\n

Today, the communities have the opportunity to meet to exchange information and share ideas on how to address the threats to their shared resources\u2014most recently, walrus \u201chaulouts\u201d.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

In August 2015, thousands of walruses haul out on the beach in northwestern Alaska. Photo by\u00a0Gary Braasch\/Corbis<\/p><\/div>\n

Warming temperatures in the Arctic are causing sea ice to recede. Without ice to rest on, Pacific walruses have been forming haulouts<\/a>\u2014crowding onto beaches by the thousands. So many walruses in such close quarters can lead to stampedes, which can cause the animals to crush their own young. It\u2019s a strange, troubling sight for the indigenous communities that have survived on seasonal hunts for centuries.<\/p>\n

And every year, the haulouts seem to grow, hunter James Tazruk from Point Lay, Alaska, tells attendees of a session on walrus management in the Alaskan and Russian Arctic. \u201cBefore, it was, like, 5,000, and now it\u2019s like 25,000. And I think next year it\u2019s going to be even more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps counterintuitively, the haulouts are actually making hunting more difficult. The American and Russian hunters shared ideas on how to limit human activity near the haulouts to prevent stampedes, including pushing for no-fly zones near walrus habitat.<\/p>\n

With receding sea ice the root of the haulout problem, most of the group\u2019s exchanges were ideas on how villages can adapt. A member of the Russian hunter delegation told the group that, like villages in Alaska, Russian communities are often left without food when the walruses concentrate themselves in haulouts rather than spreading out along the entire coastline. Many communities in both Alaska and Russia depend on hunting for survival, as the cost of shipping keeps food prices high.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Two indigenous Alaskan children pose with a dead Pacific walrus, circa\u00a01934-1967. Photo by\u00a0Hulton-Deutsch Collection\/Corbis<\/p><\/div>\n

Anatoly Kochnev, a biologist at the Russian Academy of Sciences and one of that country\u2019s foremost Arctic scientists, says haulouts in Russia used to happen just once every three or four years. Now, both the frequency and size of haulouts are increasing. In Alaska, most of the haulouts are happening along the state\u2019s northwest coast.<\/p>\n

Kochnev says that the US and Russian governments could do more to help, pointing to the countries\u2019 existing partnership on polar bear conservation as a model.<\/p>\n

In 2000, representatives from the United States, Russia, and indigenous communities in both countries signed an agreement that created the US-Russia Polar Bear Commission, which coordinates the management of polar bear habitat split between the two countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know it would be very effective and useful,\u201d Kochnev says, \u201cfor the Pacific walrus to have the same kind of agreement on the government level.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says the two governments should formalize a relationship that echoes the tradition of cooperation of the region\u2019s indigenous populations.<\/p>\n

Ambassador David Balton, chair of the senior Arctic officials of the Arctic Council agrees. \u201cIt\u2019s no secret that the United States and Russia have significant conflicts on other parts of the world and other issues,\u201d he says. But indigenous peoples\u2019 relations are largely independent of those conflicts. \u201cIn a sense, they can help us lead, and keep the glue in place.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Alaska and Russia, traditional hunters meet to discuss threats to their way of life.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12681,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"acf":{"hero_video_url":null,"hero_video_caption":"","deck":"From Alaska and Russia, traditional hunters meet to discuss threats to their way of life.","authors_group":[{"by_group":"by","contributors_group":[15687]}],"word_count_override":"","podbean1":"","podbean2":"","redirect":"","geolocation":{"address":"64.857556, -147.8364","lat":64.857556,"lng":-147.8364},"related":[16213,17035],"twitterimage":13633,"facebookimage":13631,"twitterdescription":"","edited":"","factchecked":"","code":"","no_old_story_flag":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/16903"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/custom_news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/16903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18844,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/16903\/revisions\/18844"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/17035"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/features\/16213"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}