For the first time, Wrangell will host the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska’s (CCTHITA) annual environmental conference.
Hosted at the Nolan Center, the Southeast Environmental Conference will begin the afternoon of September 5, continuing through the middle of the 8th. Since its inception, the conference’s focus has been on building collaboration between the region’s tribes, corporations and other agencies.
“This is something we have been doing since the early, mid-2000s,” said Ray Paddock, environmental coordinator for CCTHITA. Before its start, he explained groups often attended statewide conferences in Anchorage.
“A lot of the issues were pertaining to what is happening in that area up north,” he said. “We wanted to have a focus on our region.”
The Juneau-area conference thus focused on more regionally pertinent issues, ones which Southeast communities could better cooperate on addressing as a cohesive unit. Identifying these problems has been an evolving process, and today a conference planning committee sends out a survey to the different tribal governments. This gives each community the opportunity to list their top five concerns, which together shapes the focus on the year’s agenda.
“We kind of start prioritizing as those come in,” Paddock said.
“We come with prioritizations of climate change,” he said, with this year featuring a workshop focused on adapting to changing conditions. Next week’s climate change panel is scheduled for Thursday, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Earlier that morning, starting at 9:45 a.m., members of the conference’s mining panel will discuss transboundary issues. And prior to that at 8:30 a.m., the conference will address the topic of fish consumption rates.
Under discussion the last two conferences, this year the latter could potentially see a major development, Paddock explained. The conference is looking to undertake a regional effort that might be the first of its kind.
Another important subject to be explored include water quality, which will be the subject of a number of presentations Wednesday morning, from 8:30 to noon. Afterward during the afternoon, groups of participants will have the opportunity to see the Stikine River itself. One field trip will witness water quality sampling procedures, while the other will learn about stream temperature monitoring and sampling.
“These are some of the issues that we’ve come together for as a group,” said Paddock.
Getting to take a site visit during the conference is a relatively new development, as last year’s was the first held outside of Juneau, in Ketchikan. In an effort to better build working relationships and cooperation, hosting the conference in communities such as Wrangell could provide conference partners a unique opportunity to showcase their projects and highlight local challenges.
One change this year is the time allotted. Normally a week-long event, the conference this year has had to be condensed to around three days. Partly this is due to the Labor Day holiday, but also the group has had to work around subsistence-related schedules. Right now a number of communities are still in the midst of their harvest season, and many are preparing to go hunting.
Still, the agenda should prove to be interesting, and Paddock has hopes it will be productive. “We’re hoping we can come together as a cohesive unit.”
Presentations will be open to the public. The conference opens up with a welcoming presentation by Wrangell Cooperative Association, Tuesday at 1:30 p.m.
Reader Comments(0)