Implications of Fire Policy on Native Land Use in the Yukon Flats, Alaska

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Through a process of participatory mapping, this research assessed the impacts of the 1984 change in Alaska fire policy from one of exclusion to one of management on Native land use in the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge. Findings suggest that while the change in policy has had little measurable effect on community land use the continued suppression of fire on Native owned lands is having a direct impact on the current availability of wildlife resources to the point of necessitating territorial expansion among Native resource users. However, given the complexity of human nature, the impacts associated with the 1984 policy change should not be reduced to a simplistic cause-and-effect relationship. Rather this analysis demonstrates the interaction as well as the contradiction that occur between policy, culture, and ecology as these factors together have come to influence Native land use.