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Wainwright Traditional Use Area Conservation Project

 

The Nature Conservancy is working in partnership with the Wainwright Traditional Council to sustain the fish and wildlife important to the Native people of the village of Wainwright. This project—the Wainwright Traditional Use Area Conservation Project (TUACP)—will preserve areas of cultural importance to the Inupiat people in Wainwright.

The village of Wainwright is a coastal community on the Chukchi Sea. It is located roughly 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle in the coastal plain often referred to as Alaska’s North Slope. More than 90% of the 531 residents of Wainwright are Inupiat, and the majority of residents fish, hunt, and gather much of their food, maintaining a traditional, subsistence way of life. Ancestors of the present day residents of Wainwright were the Utukokmiut (people of the Utukok River), and the Kukmiut (people of the Kuk River). The village was established in 1904 when a school and clinic were built by the Alaska Native Service at the current village site. 

The lands used by the people of Wainwright for traditional activities, such as hunting, fishing, and berry picking, encompass a vast portion of northwest Alaska, from Cape Lisburne to Point Barrow, and inland as far as the Colville River. This remote area, approximately twice the size of Vermont, includes a large wetland complex that is largely contained within the boundaries of the northwest portion of the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska (NPRA). The potential economic benefits of development of natural resources within NPRA are generally welcomed by the people of the North Slope, but there is concern that rapid, uncontrolled expansion of development infrastructure will harm the subsistence hunting, fishing, and gathering sites and resources around North Slope villages. Understanding the potential impacts of development on these resources and planning development to limit impacts to subsistence resources are central goals of this project. 

The TUACP will bring together thousands of years of traditional knowledge with the ecological assessment tools of present-day conservation biology. The Conservancy is working closely with the Wainwright Traditional Council, the federally-recognized tribe in Wainwright, to gather information from experienced hunters and elders about the habitats used for traditional activities.  This information will be integrated with the data from the Conservancy’s Arctic Ecoregional Assessment to identify important areas of cultural and conservation value. The community will develop recommendations for management of these areas in a manner that will sustain these values over the long term. This plan will be owned by the people of Wainwright, and reflect their interests.

Few communities in the United States still have the ability to plan for the lands around them in advance of major development. The people of Wainwright have recognized this unique and vanishing opportunity, and are seizing it. Not only will the project allow the community to plan for the long-term uses of the lands they directly own, but it will provide a vehicle for them to assert their values, rights and interests as the northwest portion of the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska is opened for natural resource exploration and development.  

By partnering with the people of Wainwright in their effort to sustain their subsistence way of life, the Conservancy will help to conserve some of the most important habitats for fish and wildlife in Alaska’s Arctic.