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An Eye to the Future: Stewarding the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge: Tuesday, 2/15, 5 – 6 p.m. (AKT)

Kris Inman, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge Supervisory Wildlife Biologist

This meeting’s presentations were recorded.  Watch below:

Christina Nelson, Selawik National Wildlife Refuge:
Intro to Selawik

Kris Inman, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge:
Stewarding the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge

(This recording has been edited to include the wolverine footage that wouldn’t play during Kris’ presentation.)


This is a time of unprecedented, profound, and rapid human-driven environmental change.  In her presentation, Kris will share a few of the Kenai biology team’s many projects that give a big-picture view of how wildlife populations and habitats might be changing or impacted by landscape issues like climate change and human population growth.  Changing water temperatures in salmon streams, increased traffic on the Sterling Highway, more people living and recreating around the refuge and the spread of non-native species are a few of the human caused impacts to the refuge wildlife that Kenai biologists and agency partners are addressing. 

Kris will share new technology like thermal imagery to document and understand the impact of water temperature changes on our world-famous salmon rivers that sustain bears, eagles, and people. She will also share results from the Refuge’s efforts to minimize the impact of increased human presence on the Kenai including the effectiveness of Alaska’s first wildlife road crossing project to provide safe movements for wildlife across the busy Sterling Highway which splits the Refuge.  She will also highlight collaborative efforts to eradicate or control the spread of non-native invasive species like pike, elodea, white sweet clover, bird vetch, and reed canary grass that influences salmon habitat or encroach on native vegetation. In doing so, the biology team, working with refuge staff and many partners, will meet the station’s vision of stewarding the lands and waters with an eye to the future, so the Refuge’s diverse and abundant wildlife remain for the enjoyment and well-being of generations to come. 

Moose using the new Sterling Highway wildlife underpasses.  Fences funnel wildlife to the underpasses of this increasingly busy highway.   Kris will discuss what the refuge has learned about the effectiveness of this project.

Kris Inman recently joined the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge as the Supervisory Wildlife Biologist. Before coming to Alaska, she worked on a wide range of wildlife research and inventory and monitoring projects, from the little-known Tomah mayfly and freshwater mussels to more charismatic species like wolves, bears, and wolverine. Kris received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Maine and a Master of Science degree from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. 

She spent the last twenty years living, working, and raising her family in the lands outside of Yellowstone National Park, where she and her husband co-led a collaborative wolverine research study for the Wildlife Conservation Society. This project eventually would contribute the largest body of science on wolverines in the lower 48 and would identify the biggest conservation needs: to restore, connect, and monitor wolverines across their current and historic range.

From there, Kris switched from researcher to implementor. She worked with broad stakeholder groups in SW Montana to apply wolverine science in a region critical to wildlife connectivity for not only wolverines but also migratory ungulates and recovered grizzly bear and wolf populations. As the Coordinator of Strategic Partnerships and Engagement for the Wildlife Conservation Society, she brought stakeholders together to develop tools to reduce negative human-wildlife interactions. She also explored and implemented natural climate adaptation strategies like beaver mimicry to improve private working ranchlands’ economic and ecological sustainability as critical corridors to public lands.

Kris holding a wolverine!

In 2018, the Disney Conservation Fund named Kris a Disney Conservation Hero for her contributions to science and engaging and empowering communities to take science to action. Kris was also selected as an American Association for the Advancement of Science IF/THEN® Ambassador, a network of 125 women STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) professionals from around the country who share their professional stories so young girls see that a career in STEM is possible. 

 Kris sees the Kenai Peninsula as similar to the Greater Yellowstone Area in its global significance as a large, intact, wild landscape, diverse in its wildlife while grappling with the challenges of rapidly growing nearby communities seeking solitude and world-renowned outdoor experiences. 

Kris is glad to be a part of the Kenai Refuge and the larger refuge team in Alaska. She works with colleagues who recognize that conserving these great places will take a new future-oriented approach to conservation, and they are committed to developing solutions to meet the challenges of this century. At the same time, this work recognizes that people are part of nature and not separate from it.  Seeing people in this light, we no longer just identify people as the problem but also the solution.




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Bridging the Gap/Usguciaraq: Tuesday, 1/18, 5 – 6 p.m. (AKT)


This meeting’s presentation was recorded: watch below.
This recording does not include Jacqueline Cleveland’s video (not yet released).




C
hristopher Tulik of the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge and Jacqueline Cleveland of the Togiak National Wildlife Refuge, both Yupik, will present on their work as Refuge Information Technicians (RITs).  Christopher’s intimate knowledge of the Yupiaq language and culture, the local area and the people make him a valuable liaison between the Refuge and those who live in the communities on and around the Yukon Delta Refuge. He travels by boat, snowmachine and plane to make personal visits to dozens of small subsistence communities. During the visits, he informs residents about Refuge-related conservation work, hunting and fishing opportunities, and other topics that are important to subsistence harvest.  He also hears their concerns and local knowledge of fish and wildlife matters and ensures this is communicated to Refuge staff back at refuge headquarters.   Jacki is new to her role as an RIT for Togiak National Wildlife Refuge.  She will share with us the essence of subsistence life in her village of Quinhagak through her outstanding photography and videography.

   

  Jacqueline with sauropod dinosaur tracks on the Togiak Refuge.

Christopher Tulik was born in Bethel and raised in Nightmute, a small village on Nelson Island along the western Bering Sea coast of the refuge. Growing up in a traditional subsistence lifestyle has given Christopher an understanding of the importance of fish and wildlife to the culture of local Alaska Native people.  Christopher has said he became interested in working with wildlife when he was very young and became aware of the fish and wildlife all around him that sustained his family in all seasons.  He learned respect for nature from watching his father and older brothers returning from the hunt and how the catch had been properly handled.
 
Christopher Tulik

He was one of the youngest Refuge Information Technicians (RITs) hired when the program began in 1984. After a break, he returned to serve as an RIT in 2014 to assist the Refuge with outreach, education and tribal consultation. Christopher Tulik recently accepted a position as the Lead Refuge Information Technician (RIT) for the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge. In this position Chris will supervise up to five permanent RITs. You can read more about Chris’s life and work here.

Nalikutaar (in Yup’ik) or Jacqueline Cleveland was raised in Quinhagak, Alaska where she currently lives with her fiancé, Franko and dog, Pumba. Jacki received her Bachelor of Art’s degree from Montana State University in Media and Theatre Arts and Native American Studies. She is a subsistence hunter, fisher and gatherer, a freelance photographer/videographer, and recently accepted the job of Refuge Information Technician for the Togiak National Wildlife Refuge.  

  Jacqueline Cleveland with the book that features her photographs.


Jacki has had her photographs published in numerous publications most notably in the 2020 book from the University of Alaska Fairbanks press, Yungcautnguuq Nunam Qainga Tamarmi/All the Land’s Surface is Medicine: Edible and Medicinal Plants of Southwest Alaska, for which she did most of the photography.  Jacki recently completed a film project with BBC on Nelson Island in which she served as location manager.  The segment on muskox in rut filmed on the island will be part of the Earth’s Great Rivers II to be out this spring on BBC.  Jackie is currently finishing up work on a film about climate change that she co-directed, served as cultural advisor for, as well as did some of the filming.  Ellavut Cimirtuq/Our World is Changing will also be out this spring.