Powerful Public Testimony at CRNA Climate Change Plan Meeting
On March 3, Copper River Native Association (CRNA) Environmental Coordinator Sarah Sherwood hosted a virtual community meeting. This meeting was part of the initial stages towards the ultimate goal of creating a “Climate Change Adaptation Plan,” with funding from a Bureau of Indian Affairs Tribal Resilience Program grant.
Sherwood gave a brief summary of some of the impacts of climate change observed statewide, including more invasive plants, salmon disease, larger spruce bark beetle populations, increased flood and fire risk, increased fresh and ocean water temperatures, record high air temperatures, and cumulative ice loss among others.
Locally, Sherwood said community members have observed changes in caribou migration patterns, moose rutting, and unpredictable or low salmon runs. Residents have reported having to travel farther for berries, moose and caribou, and having fewer and smaller berries. Residents have also reported more difficult travel to subsistence resources due to changes in freeze up or break up.
Odin Miller from Ahtna Intertribal Resource Center (AITRC) echoed these observations, noting that he had collected local observations of smaller fish, fish that appear to have more parasites or other diseases, and changes to caribou habitat due to brushy vegetation invading the tundra.
Erica Juhan from ANTHC gave an overview of the Local Environmental Observer, or LEO network (www.leonetwork.org). This program collects observations from local people and utilizes mapping tools to map climate change impacts across much of the world. ANTHC is an Alaska partner.
The majority of the meeting was spent in public testimony.
Almost everyone described more difficulty in accessing fishing and fewer fish caught overall, in addition to having to travel farther to find moose. Gloria Stickwan of Tazlina stated that there are not enough fish for the traditional method of making a bale of fish. Tribal Administrator Willard (Bill) Hand of Kluti-Kaah recalled being put out as a child that “we had to go out and clean 200 fish this afternoon.” He said he realizes now how fortunate his family was in those days, now that the catch has gone from “hundreds to handfuls” per effort.
Erosion is a major issue that has damaged or destroyed fish camps or other points at which people used to access rivers for fishing. The steeper banks left behind make fishing much more challenging and dangerous. Erosion also has the potential to damage salmon spawning grounds themselves, as Kluti-Kaah Caribou Clan Tribal Member and Council Member Faye Ewan pointed out.
The loss of land from erosion is significant as well. According to Hand, Kluti-Kaah village has lost 200 feet in less than four years, and their neighbors to the north in Copperville have also lost substantial land. Hand said that traditional Ahtna grave sites are in danger of being washed away, in addition to contemporary infrastructure.
Donna Renard, a Tazlina Tribal Member, said she has been hunting her whole life. She said, “The increased heat is affecting moose behavior. Moose and caribou hunting season starts at the beginning of August. During this month, temperatures are still high. Therefore, moose are sporadic, some years. The hunting season ends September 20, leaving a small window of maybe two weeks of real hunting when the moose descend from high country. This year I think my family only got a half a moose,” she said, “And that’s because I signed up on the roadkill list. My brother-in-law did harvest a moose. That is not enough, that’s not sufficient for a large family. It is like that with every other resource for food. I can get emotional about this because this is my lifestyle. We’ve got to find ways to adapt because I don’t believe that we can stop it.”
Renard spoke about the salmon and said she has seen more tumors growing in the fish. “What can we really do about it?” she said, “As an indigenous person I’m always looking to find ways to utilize and preserve every resource I have for food.”
“My family’s not going to quit doing what we’ve done for thousands of years,” Renard continued, “It’s disheartening because I know a lot of effort has gone into gathering the data, but this is the Earth. My feeling is the change is going to happen. We need to find ways to adapt. Maybe gathering all this information, we can come up with a plan so that we can adapt and continue to live here, continue to exist.”
Renard went on to say that with subsistence resources becoming scarcer, people on fixed incomes are feeling the impact. She also is concerned about the health impacts on the community. “We are having to supplement our food with meats purchased from the grocery store that have a high saturated fat content. Moose has next to no saturated fat compared to commercially produced meat. That does affect our health,” she said, “The processed foods affect our health because of the different chemicals they use. We do have health issues already. And I’m most definitely sure it’s from not being able to eat our natural foods from our natural resources.”
Faye Ewan also gave detailed testimony. Like others, she said the failure of the river to freeze over and erosion issues have impacted both subsistence resources and her ability to access them. However, she emphasized that climate change is not the only driver impacting subsistence resources.
“I fished here my whole life,” she said, “I know all the land. I don’t have a PhD but I can take you anywhere you want to go and show you where there used to be more whitefish, more salmon. Nobody has asked me.”
Ewan recalls more wetland habitat in the 1950s, and believes that the pipeline, the highway, residential housing, and climate change were all factors in reducing the amount of wetlands. “There’s more housing around, there’s more humans around, and a lot of places are being developed among the communities where there was natural habitat,” she said.
Ewan also spoke of hazardous waste dumping in the area during World War II and subsequent military exercises. “That has a lot to do with what is happening here today,” she said. “There was no protection of our land. It was a free-for-all. All of that contaminated waste was dumped right in Dry Creek and now the community is cleaning that up,” she said. Ewan wonders whether some cases of cancer among the community could be attributed to inappropriate waste disposal.
Finally, Ewan asked that Sherwood consult with the Arctic Athabaskan Council to learn more about the environmental struggles in the area, citing Chief Gary Harrison of Chickaloon as a member of the board.
Representatives from several organizations offered to share relevant data they had already collected, or other resources. These included Copper River Watershed Project (CRWP), Copper Country Alliance, Wrangell Institute for Science and the Environment (WISE) and the Willow Creek Research Project. The Willow Creek Research Project, run by Dave Wellman, has collected ten years of detailed stream flow and water temperature data.
There was also some discussion among attendees of adaptation strategies that are currently underway. The local Division of Forestry has held a series of community wildfire protection plan meetings. Hand shared that both “the Native Village of Kluti-Kaah Tribal Government and the Copper River Local Emergency Planning Committee are concerned with the seriousness of the unprecedented erosion and are working toward mitigation and evacuation planning. Evacuation planning will be based primarily around wildfire and smoke.”
The ultimate goal of the CRNA project is to identify strategies to adapt to climate change in the Copper Valley, at both the large scale and individual village level. The topic of the next meeting will be identifying assets, risks, and mitigation strategies. The date is yet to be determined.
Partners in this project include the Model Forest Policy Program, the University of Alaska Fairbanks International Arctic Research Center, the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC), and the Ahtna Intertribal Resources Commission (AITRC).
For more information or to submit your own observations please contact Sarah Sherwood- ssherwood@crnative.org. You can also submit your observations using this online form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfgKcIPzBu2ETi9C5pg6EKU7q8KP0Hfab7yl9CphLHfc-0TWA/viewform?gxids=7628
Editor’s notes: Donna Renard wishes to make clear that she was speaking on her own behalf and not as a representative of any larger entity. Bill Hand also was speaking on his own behalf for much of his testimony, unless he was making specific mention of another entity. CRNA is an advertiser in the Copper River Record.
An interview with Tazlina Village Native American Lands Environmental Mitigation Program (NALEMP) Manager Rick Young about toxic waste dumping in Dry Creek and local efforts to clean it up will appear in an upcoming issue.
