Within a very few years, the Forty-Mile River watershed along the Alaska-Yukon border will be one of the best documented and best understood parts of the huge area drained by the Yukon River.

The Forty-Mile Transboundary Watershed Assessment is the first major project undertaken by the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council. Heidi Istchenko, the council's Yukon Region director, says the bulk of the work should be done in two to three years.

It's an ambitious project. Although the Council arose from indigenous peoples' concern about the condition of the Yukon River, the project isn't restricted to water quality, Istchenko says.

The Forty-Mile study will look at the broad ecosystem of the drainage basin, from hydrology to wildlife, and including human use of the water and land, both past and present. It will review and pull together existing research, implement new research to fill any gaps in knowledge, make recommendations for environmental remediation projects, and monitor the progress and effectiveness of those projects.

"This fits into the big assessment we're doing," explains Istchenko. Ultimately, the council intends to complete a detailed assessment of the entire Yukon River watershed, from the mountains of the southern Yukon to the wide Alaskan delta where the river flows into the sea.

The most important product of the Forty-Mile assessment will be the recommendations for remediation, for repairing damage done to the river and its watershed through human activity.

"That is essentially what the entire watershed project is about too," says Istchenko.

Ambitious as the watershed assessment is, creating the organization that is spearheading the assessment was almost as ambitious an undertaking.

The Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council is an indigenous non-profit organization involving more than 40 Tribes and First Nations along the whole length of the Yukon River. It has offices in both the Yukon and Alaska. The two regional directors, Heidi Istchenko for the Yukon and Rosetta Alcantra for Alaska, share responsibility for operations of the council as a whole.

The council has support for the Forty-Mile project from the two national governments involved, through the United States Bureau of Land Management and Canada's Indian and Northern Affairs department, as well as from non-government organizations like the U.S.-based River Network and Indian Law Resource Center.

The Forty-Mile is a good place to start the assessment of the Yukon River watershed, says Istchenko, partly because it has been well-used and well-documented over the years. The wealth of existing information should reduce the cost of the Forty-Mile assessment.

"It's not going to be a phenomenal cost, considering the size of the project," Istchenko says.

The other advantage of starting with the Forty-Mile is its location. Because the river flows near the boundary between Alaska and the Yukon, many of the groups and agencies involved in the larger study are also involved in the Forty-Mile study, including several Alaskan Tribes and Yukon First Nations, as well as both national governments and state and territorial officials.

Istchenko emphasizes, however, that the Tribes and First Nations are the key participants in the study. They created the council, and those conducting the study report back to them, specifically to the Tribes and First Nations whose traditional territories are affected.

For members of the council, the Forty-Mile study and, ultimately, the larger Yukon River study will be tools not just to clean up the rivers but to record traditional knowledge, improve educational and organizational programs in communities, create employment, and develop a teamwork approach to decision-making.

For more information about the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council and the Alaska/Yukon Forty-Mile Transboundary Watershed Assessment, contact Heidi Istchenko, YRITWC Yukon Region Director, at (867) 393-2199.