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WWF’s Arctic Community Wildlife Grants support communities and help species

Dana Okitun, son of Marvin Okitun, looks ahead from bow of boat on Yukon River

Indigenous hunters from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in Southwest Alaska have long known that beluga whales often migrate upstream in search of food. But finding them is a different story.

“When you go out, you don't see the whale. You just see the ripples. You train your eyes to see that,” says John Unok, hunter and Yup’ik culture teacher in Kotlik, Alaska. “When I bring people out to sea, they're like ‘there's nothing there.’ We look for a ripple, a different wave, and then we see a different ripple and we're like, ‘oh, look, there's a whale there.’ You've trained yourself to look for those things. We have to pass that down or you lose some of that connection with the earth.”

WWF recently worked with Kotlik and Emmonak community members in Alaska to capture underwater audio of beluga whales. Belugas are culturally important and a critical source of food for these communities. This community-initiated research exemplifies co-management in action, marrying Indigenous knowledge and science to achieve better results for people and nature.

“It's a respect thing. People don't realize that when we're Indigenous, we respect everything that we see that feeds us. We're conservationists. We don't kill for pleasure, and we don't kill for sport. It's respect for everything. Respect of yourself, respect of others, and respect of animals and plants.”

John Unok
Yup’ik culture teacher and hunter

The idea of capturing audio was first presented in 2022 at a meeting of the Alaska Beluga Whale Committee—a co-management body comprised of Indigenous hunters, wildlife managers, and scientists that work together to ensure beluga populations remain healthy and that Alaska Native hunters are still able to harvest for subsistence for their families and communities.

At this meeting, scientists presented their work on population estimates for belugas in the Eastern Bering Sea. When they pulled up a map of the areas that were surveyed, a young Alaska Native hunter delegate, Duncan Okitkun, pointed out that the research areas were limited and did not extend into the river, where he knew firsthand that belugas would often gather. He was concerned that the surveys were missing animals in the Yukon Delta.

Because tracking the whales in rivers is often challenging, he offered a solution—using acoustic monitoring devices in the Yukon River to listen for belugas—and local logistical support to make it happen.

“One thing that we're always questioning is science and what scientists see and what we know growing up with our local Indigenous knowledge,” says Marvin Okitkun, father of Duncan Okitkun. “From the science perspective, they come and go all the time, but we're always here, and then they question how we know the population and the health of our species that we harvest for subsistence.”

With a grant from WWF, Alaska Beluga Whale Committee delegates from the villages of Kotlik and Emmonak partnered with Manuel Castellote, an acoustician affiliated with NOAA Fisheries and the University of Washington, to monitor the beluga whale populations.

The idea blossomed into a fully-fledged pilot project that offered results within a year. Belugas were detected in the summer and fall, with individuals moving through the delta system.

This co-production demonstrates the power of entwining Indigenous knowledge with Western scientific research and how communities and researchers can design projects that support shared interests.

Arctic Community Wildlife Grants program

Projects like the beluga monitoring in the Yukon River are the kind of community initiatives and projects that get conservation results. These projects support informed management of iconic Arctic marine species and the interconnected cultural heritage of Alaskan communities.

WWF is launching an Arctic Community Wildlife Grants program to ensure that projects like this can get the essential funding they need. The program supports conservation, stewardship, and research initiatives that focus on coastal Arctic ecology, community sustainability, and priority Arctic wildlife, including polar bears, walrus, ice seals, belugas, bowhead whales, and Arctic seabirds in the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort Seas and adjacent coastal areas. These grants support Indigenous communities, local wildlife management bodies, and scientific researchers to conduct projects focused on cultural resilience, ensuring food security, and monitoring threats to resources people care about, all to support healthy Arctic marine ecosystems for people and nature.

WWF’s Arctic program works to protect the diversity of Arctic life and ensure that healthy Arctic ecosystems support the cultural, social, and economic needs of the people living there. The Arctic Community Wildlife Grants program furthers this mission and, in the process, protects Alaska’s iconic wildlife, from polar bears and walrus to bowhead whales and Arctic seabirds. The beluga research is one of several projects already supported by the grants. We welcome your proposal! 

“Don't just listen to one side of the story. Listen to our side of the story," says Marvin. "People that live here, people that harvest what we harvest.”

Learn more about WWF's Arctic Wildlife Grants program and apply today

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