WRRB staff travel to Alaska for ɂekwǫ̀, ungulate event

Anchorage, AK: WRRB staff attended the 2023 North American Caribou Workshop and Arctic Ungulate Conference held in Anchorage, Alaska, May 8 to 12.  

Wildlife Management Biologist Laura Meinert and Conservation Biologist Aimee Guile had the opportunity to share their knowledge with a joint presentation called ‘An Adaptive Co-management Framework for Bathurst and Bluenose-East Barren-ground Caribou.’
“It was fantastic to listen to and learn from biologists and researchers from the North and from across the globe on both ɂekwǫ̀ and other ungulates,” said Meinert. “Aimee and I were able to present on the Adaptive Management Framework and hear feedback from others in the field.”

Adaptive management is the way in which we use monitoring information collected from ɂekwǫ̀ study throughout the year, and apply it to management actions on a regular basis.  
Executive Director Jody Pellissey also took part in a panel discussion involving other co-management specialists called Caribou Crossing: Collaborative Stewardship in a Changing Arctic. The panel discussed positive ways that Indigenous knowledge and Western science work together to preserve northern ɂekwǫ̀ and also touched on how harvest regulations can work with Indigenous ways of knowing to affect better management as ɂekwǫ̀ populations become more unpredictable due to climate change.

Tim Fullman, a senior ecologist with the Wilderness Society - a major sponsor and participant of the conference - told Alaska's News Source that the conference is an important way to preserve northern hoofed animals that know no boundaries. 
“It’s (the conference) intended to represent the fact that not only do these ungulates cross landscape boundaries and international boundaries,” he explained, “But also that the knowledge and things we need to be able to protect and conserve them into the future is going to span the boundaries of western knowledge and of Indigenous knowledge.”

The next conference is to be held in Sǫǫ̀mbak’è (Yellowknife) in 2025.