Over 95% of the 10 million-acre territory of the Taku River Tlingit First Nation (TRTFN) in northwestern British Columbia is wilderness. The prevailing salmon producer of Southeast Alaska and the largest intact wilderness river system on the Pacific Coast of North America, the 4.5 million-acre transboundary Taku River watershed, dominates this territory as it flows from the interior mountain ranges of British Columbia to the coastal ranges of Alaska.
To date protection efforts for the Taku have been in response to
a proposed gold mine, which includes a 99-mile access road through the watershed. In 1998, the BC government approved the project, but the TRTFN, aided by organizations associated with the Transboundary Watershed Alliance, filed a lawsuit challenging the project. The BC courts decided for the Taku River Tlingit, on the grounds that the TRTFN had not been properly consulted, especially in the absence of a land plan and ongoing treaty negotiations. Even though the threat of the mine and road has not been completely eliminated given that the BC government is now appealing to the Supreme Court of Canada, the Taku River Tlingit have proven themselves to be ardent and proficient protectors of these lands.
Student Program
This research project site offers students the opportunity to experience
an intact wilderness ecosystem by living and working in remote camps reached
only by floatplane, hiking, and/or running the river. Students often begin
with fisheries work on Atlin Lake -British Columbia’s largest natural
body of freshwater- that includes snorkeling surveys for grayling and Bull
trout, gill netting Lake trout, and visiting and learning about important
sites of the Taku River Tlingit. We then walk into the Taku watershed via
a traditional route the Tlingit have followed for hundreds of years when
returning inland from coastal salmon fishing in the summers. Students spend
the majority of their time in the Taku watershed helping to record the
traditional oral history of Tlingit elders, collecting grizzly bear DNA
through non-invasive hair snaring, conducting amphibian studies, bald eagle
point counts, and ground-truthing habitat models.
Student Program Dates: June 30 to August 11
The Round River Student Programs and Conservation Projects catalog
may be downloaded in Adobe Acrobat pdf format:
