Documenting Local Knowledge of Changing Wildlife Habits and Adaptive Considerations of Large Land Mammal Hunters to the Effects of Climate Change in Southwest Alaska
Date: February 6, 2018
Presenter: James Van Lanen, Subsistence Resource Specialist, Alaska Department of Fish and Game
Presenter: James Van Lanen, Subsistence Resource Specialist, Alaska Department of Fish and Game
Summary:
Participatory landscape mapping is an effective method for documenting geospatially specific local ecological knowledge of changing wildlife habitats and environmental conditions. This presentation will highlight results from a recent Western Alaska LCC-funded project focused on mapping local knowledge of caribou behavior dynamics in relation to ecological change in Alaska Game Management Units 9B-C, 17, 18, and 19A-C, over the course of five decades. The primary adaptive considerations of subsistence large land mammal hunters facing changing environmental conditions are access and prey-switching. Human-large-land-mammal-subsistence-system resilience depends on hunters being flexible in regards to access methods and targeted prey species and on resource managers flexibly adapting legal hunting seasons to times when local travel conditions are optimal.
Participatory landscape mapping is an effective method for documenting geospatially specific local ecological knowledge of changing wildlife habitats and environmental conditions. This presentation will highlight results from a recent Western Alaska LCC-funded project focused on mapping local knowledge of caribou behavior dynamics in relation to ecological change in Alaska Game Management Units 9B-C, 17, 18, and 19A-C, over the course of five decades. The primary adaptive considerations of subsistence large land mammal hunters facing changing environmental conditions are access and prey-switching. Human-large-land-mammal-subsistence-system resilience depends on hunters being flexible in regards to access methods and targeted prey species and on resource managers flexibly adapting legal hunting seasons to times when local travel conditions are optimal.
