“Sentinels” Lead Inclusive Climate Monitoring in the Arctic | Article

Born out of an initiative by tribal governments on the Pribilof Islands in Alaska over 20 years ago, the Indigenous Sentinels Network (ISN)—formerly the BeringWatch program—addresses climate change in the Arctic while providing an economic boost to remote communities.

Operating in over 20 communities across Alaska, Indigenous Peoples employed in the program (called the “Sentinels”) work on either a full-time, part-time, or seasonal basis, or serve as volunteers to conduct environmental monitoring, based on community needs. ISN combines Western science with Indigenous knowledge and practices, incorporating both methods into data collection processes to contextualize findings.

“Everything about the program—from where you're looking and what time you're looking and how you interpret behaviors and interactions—it's all rooted in the knowledge that's held by the Indigenous Sentinels,” said Lauren Divine, director of the ecosystem conservation office of the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island.

To conduct the monitoring, Sentinels use a web or mobile app created by ISN, which can be customized to a given community’s unique needs. The app also works in areas where a Sentinel does not have WiFi or cell phone data coverage, which is common across Alaska.

The collection of data helps to advance equity by enabling tribes to conduct their own research, make decisions regarding which issues to prioritize, and participate in broader institutional conversations about climate impacts. The money Sentinels earn additionally has an outsized impact on their communities and helps traditional lifestyles endure.

“In small, remote, or rural communities, the impact of a single to a few jobs, such as through hiring Sentinels, can have huge cascading benefits on the community,” Divine reflected. “The benefits of job security for one person can make the difference in a whole family, and the benefits extend to social and emotional benefits that have impacts well beyond the individual. The impacts of even temporary or seasonal work for someone that, say, fishes and hunts and wants or needs to maintain a subsistence lifestyle, but also needs some supplement of income, can be huge.”

Once data are collected by Sentinels, they may be used by the tribe or entity to help write grants, assist in reporting for grant-funded projects, and establish baseline data to inform local management and planning activities. ISN receives some funding from federal sources, such as the EPA Indian Environmental General Assistance Program, and also partners with state non-profits, and universities to conduct monitoring activities.

One environmental phenomenon that Sentinel monitoring identified was a wave of puffin die-offs on St. Paul Island. After noticing puffin die-offs on the island, Sentinels referenced their database to identify that both the rate and time of year was unusual, indicating an unusual mortality event was underway.

When Sentinels realized a die-off may be occurring, ISN contacted the University of Washington Coastal Observation And Seabird Survey Team, one of their partner organizations, and was able to set up an entirely new protocol for detecting bird die-offs, called a “Die-off Alert.” Now, this methodology has become the accepted protocol for monitoring large-scale seabird die-offs across the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.

“Being able to have a new protocol, we have a way that we can move from the regular surveys to responding to a huge mass die-off without overwhelming what is usually very limited staff and resources that we have as tribes to respond to anything,” Divine said.

Sentinels were also able to address coastal erosion on St. Paul by bringing their monitoring data to decision-makers. Starting around 2016, tribes began to see increased coastal erosion due to hazardous winter storms, culminating in the erosion of a major island roadway. The erosion impacted the local ecosystem and the people that depended on it for their livelihoods, threatening to destroy part of a northern fur seal pup rookery and cut off access to traditional Indigenous hunting grounds.

Sentinels were able to quickly implement an erosion monitoring program with help from the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys (DGGS), which provided low-cost tools and protocols on how to conduct the monitoring. These methods were later added to the ISN monitoring app in a feature standardized for all Alaskan tribal communities to be able to use in their area.

In turn, ISN assisted DGGS’s communications with remote tribal communities. Whereas the DGGS previously used paper documents, the new app feature allows tribes and the DGGS to communicate information in real-time.

“We (the Tribe) want tribal sovereignty,” Divine said. “We want data sovereignty. And, the ability to own and say what happens with the data that we're collecting in this program really addresses a lot of the needs that tribes have and it gives them tools that we've needed for a long time.”

Author: Irina Costache