The first week has flown by. And it seems that may have a lot to say...so I will break this into a few posts.

WORK (or, why I came to the Yukon).
The Yukon River Inter-tribal Watershed Council (YRITWC) has an office in downtown Whitehorse, which is where I live and work. It's a two bedroom apartment with the office in the living room and so I really do have a short commute! I will stay here until a new intern comes in July or until I find a place I really want to move in to.

Most days it's Maya (intern from UBC), Loni Jack (event co-ordinator from Atlin) and Albert our water quality guy around the office. Maya has an engineering background and is looking at mining, environmental assessments, reclaiming old mines and coal bed methane extraction mostly. I on the other hand am researching regulations in the YT to install a 5kW hydrokinetic turbine in the Yukon River. The YRITWC installed one last year in Ruby, Alaska and the company that built it is offering another for the Yukon side. It seems that inadvertantly I've become an IPP proponent in a way...it's interesting to see things from this side because it feels like I'm the one who is going to pull out my hair screaming "but all I want to do is put this little thing in the river...the fish will be fine!". And then I think about some of the places that I have fought for and about...and I start being happy for the regulations!

I am also working on creating a youth agenda for our upcoming Summit in August. We are going to have aboriginal youth from the watershed...hopefully one or two from each community. The program is going to focus on bringing them together (Loni told me that they are shy, especially the ones from the Northern Alaskan communities), and getting them out on the water and the land. I think it is going to be a great time and look forward to meeting delegates from the watershed. We had a meeting with one of the Cheifs (from Ta'an Kwach'an) and organizers from the other local First Nations (Kwanlin Dun) yesterday. I'm sure that this was the first time I've been part of planning an event that we discussed hunters as a key role in the event. Sounds like a wise way to feed 300 on the shores of Lake Labarge in August!

Last week Maya and I attended an environment forum put on by the Yukon Government. It was a good introduction to Whitehorse and the Yukon and what is going on up here in terms of community environmental problems. If you think that recycling is a costly and complicated affair in the South, I challenge you to go to Dawson City! Waste management in many Yukon towns mostly consists of burning garbage in a landfill. And electricity generation means diesel generators. But there are a lot of great initiatives and it's really interesting to see how things are working (or not) up here. Yukoners really care about their environment and that's why most of us are up here (tourists included), so it makes sense to take care of it. The final presenter of the day got us really excited about fishing some of the lakes around Whitehorse. I've got my flyrod and the ice is coming off the lakes!

Well that's a little bit about the work. Please follow the links to get a bigger picture of what is going on (and more pictures).

The next post will be about some of the fun I'm having...stay tuned.