Utqiaġvik Migratory Bird Festival connects bird conservation with Indigenous communities in northern Alaska

From the window of a plane, the flight from Anchorage to Utqiaġvik, Alaska, allows a birds-eye view of some of the most remarkable landscapes of the northernmost state.

“Flying from Anchorage, you first pass Denali and all of these big, majestic mountains with jagged peaks,” said Lindsay Hermanns, an alumna of the College of Natural Resources. “From there you dip into a lowland area and fly over the Brooks Range, which has a different geology. After that, you start seeing miles and miles of shallow ponds – which are the result of freeze-and-thaw processes – that from the window of the plane look like hundreds of fish scales. After that you bank out over the expansive jumble of white sea ice and over the clear blue of the Arctic Ocean."

That vision echoes the sight that numerous species of migratory bird witness as they fly north to nest and rear chicks on a landscape that blooms to accelerated life in the sunlit summers of the northern polar region. From eider ducks and snowy owls to sandpipers, gulls, and jaegers, Utqiaġvik is an important landscape for numerous bird species.

“Birds will migrate there during the breeding season, which is our summer, to raise young,” said Hermanns, who hosted this year’s Utqiaġvik Migratory Bird Festival. “Because of the unique geographic position of the Arctic coastal plains, there are less predators and lots of invertebrates to feed on, an easy food resource for both young hatchlings and the adult birds who need energy after a long migration.”

Utqiaġvik – formerly known as Barrow – is also the traditional home of the Iñupiat, a group of Alaskan Natives who have lived on the edge of the Beaufort Sea  for centuries.

For Hermanns, the interconnections between the wildlife that take advantage of summer in the Arctic Polar region and the human communities that call that landscape home presents an opportunity to foster collaborative dialogue, learning, and celebration.

“The goal of the Utqiaġvik Migratory Bird Festival has been to create both an opportunity and a safe space to share knowledge and allow people to experience different perspective about migratory birds,” said Hermanns, who graduated with a master's degree in fish and wildlife conservation from the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation this past spring. 

To build connections between festival participants and the community in Utqiaġvik, Hermanns had to figure out how to access the resources of the Iñupiat community.

“The residents of Utqiaġvik have a very strong and well-organized community presence, but you have to make an effort to tap into the resources that are available,” she said. “Sometimes the only way to do that is to go and knock on someone’s door.”

Hermanns said that a critical early connection was Iḷisaġvik College, a tribal land-grant community college in Utqiaġvik that is committed to strengthening Iñupiat culture, traditions, and language.

“Iḷisaġvik College really understands that traditional knowledge and cultural preservation is so important to their community, and having them on board with the festival was great,” said Hermanns, whose graduate research at Virginia Tech focused on the dunlin, a small wader bird that gather in large flocks during the Alaskan summer. “We were able to glean a lot of information about how people in the community view the birds and what stories and dances are associated with different species.”

The three-day festival, which took place at the Fred Ipalook Elementary School, featured a welcome ceremony, workshops and presentations aimed at both birders and children about the annual migration, art works, and birding tours to surrounding locations, so that bird watchers could see first-hand the species of birds that call the northern polar region home.

Connecting conservation and bird science with Indigenous knowledge and traditions has a personal connection for Hermanns, who has one-eighth Tlingit and Haida ancestry, an Alaskan Native group that has traditional roots in the Tongass region of southeastern Alaska.

“I didn’t use my personal background as something to stand on, but I felt like it provided an opportunity for connection,” said Hermanns, who grew up in the remote Prince of Wales Island in southern Alaska. “I was raised hunting and fishing and living off the land, and I have a deep appreciation for the customs and traditions of the people in Utqiaġvik.”

Making connections across cultures – and across thousands of miles – is one of the positive outcomes of the festival.

“One thing that struck me this year was that so many Indigenous groups across the landscape have dances based on the same birds. For example, the Iñupiaq bird dances that are performed in Utqiaġvik are also performed in the Tongass region, and even as far as Hawaii. There are these cultural connections that always amaze me, and one goal of our festival is to showcase and celebrate those connections.”

This year’s Utqiagvik Migratory Bird Festival saw the number of registered attendees jump to approximately 200 people attending at least one event, with a significant upswell in community participation. Those are two positives that Hermanns intends to build on for next year's festival.

“Having conferences and festivals in communities like Utqiaġvik is an important way to keep our fingers on the pulse of wildlife,” said Hermanns, who has returned to the “lower 48” to begin a position as a wildlife biologist for the New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia. “Talking to the people who observe and use the resources of remote locations to survive is important to understanding and preserving our natural spaces and species.”