Community Oil-Spill Response in Bering and Anadyr Straits

This workshop will bring together a diversity of stakeholders to learn more about and respond to community desires to be part of oil spill first-response efforts that help protect food security and other local resources; come to agreement on the multiple roles local community members can play in responding to oil spills; and create an action plan for moving forward on this topic. The workshop is sponsored by the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Goals for the workshop include:

• Establish what tools can be safely and effectively deployed by Alaskan and Chukotkan hunters and other community members to combat both small oil spills and to engage as part of a collective response to large spills in select areas around the Bering Strait region (encompassing Bering and Anadyr straits). This includes both efforts to constrain or divert oil away from wildlife and key habitats, as well as diverting marine mammals and other fauna away from a spill.
• Establish what training and local/regional capacity is required to sustain an ongoing safe and effective local spill response capacity.