History of land use and environmental conditions on Selawik Refuge in the early to mid-20th century

The US Fish and Wildlife Service, Region 7 intends to award a single source financial assistance agreement as authorized by 505 DM 2.14 (B) to the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. This notice is not a request for proposals and the Government does not intend to accept proposals. This financial assistance opportunity is being issued under the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU) Network: (http://www.cesu.psu.edu/materials/partners.htm). The CESU network provides research, technical assistance, and education to federal land management, environmental, and research agencies and their partners. The partners serve the biological, physical, social, cultural, and engineering disciplines needed to address natural and cultural resource management issues at multiple scales and in an ecosystem context. The purpose of this agreement is to provide support and assistance to University of Alaska Fairbanks to conduct research on the history of land use and environmental conditions on Selawik Refuge in the early to mid 20th century. This will include information on traditional family settlements, historic resource distribution and abundance, muskrat hunting and trading, and other key subsistence activities. Both oral history interviews with northwest Alaska elders and archival materials research at University of Alaska Fairbanks and other repositories will be used in this project. Oral histories and archival materials can shed light on historic environmental conditions, critical habitat (locations of seasonal family settlements were in key resource areas), changes in land use and resource distribution, and important areas for cultural resources.