Antonia Gonzales

Photo: Researchers and community members gather for a presentation by Robin Masterman at the Western Alaska Interdisciplinary Science Conference at the Yupiit Piciryarait Cultural Center in Bethel on April 9, 2026. (Samantha Watson / KYUK) Researchers and local experts gathered in Bethel last week to share environmental knowledge. As KYUK’s Samantha Watson reports, the conference highlighted the power of linking Indigenous knowledge with Western science across the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. It is the beginning of the Western Alaska Interdisciplinary Science Conference, but before everyone gets down to work – organizer Katie Basile asks them to stop and … “Think about resilience and abundance in Western Alaska. What does that look like?” Basile, with the Alaska Sea Grant which organized the conference, says it is hard not to get bogged down by the difficult issues the region is facing. Many of those problems are informing research presented this week: salmon fisheries in decline, permafrost erosion, and the devast